The influence of literacy on visual search

Abstract

Currently one in five adults is still unable to read despite a rapidly developing world. Here we show that (il)literacy has important consequences for the cognitive ability of selecting relevant information from a visual display of non-linguistic material. In two experiments we compared low to high literacy observers on both an easy and a more difficult visual search task involving different types of chicken. Low literates were consistently slower (as indicated by overall RTs) in both experiments. More detailed analyses, including eye movement measures, suggest that the slowing is partly due to display wide (i.e. parallel) sensory processing but mainly due to post-selection processes, as low literates needed more time between fixating the target and generating a manual response. Furthermore, high and low literacy groups differed in the way search performance was distributed across the visual field. High literates performed relatively better when the target was presented in central regions, especially on the right. At the same time, high literacy was also associated with a more general bias towards the top and the left, especially in the more difficult search. We conclude that learning to read results in an extension of the functional visual field from the fovea to parafoveal areas, combined with some asymmetry in scan pattern influenced by the reading direction, both of which also influence other (e.g. non-linguistic) tasks such as visual search

Literacy improves short-term serial recall of spoken verbal but not visuospatial items – Evidence from illiterate and literate adults

“…The groups also differed in their score on the Raven's test of non-verbal intelligence (Raven, Raven, & Court, 2000). This is a common finding in studies comparing literate and illiterate people (e.g., Olivers, Huettig, Singh, & Mishra, 2014) as performance on this task is affected by formal education (Neisser et al, 1996).…”

Language proficiency does not modulate executive control in older bilinguals

“…This is particularly true in the Indian context, in a large metropolitan city like Hyderabad, where monolinguals are mostly illiterates/low educated with no additional knowledge of any language. Mishra and colleagues have done many studies on Indian illiterates who were largely monolinguals knowing only their native language (Huettig, Singh, & Mishra, 2011;Mishra, Singh, Pandey, & Huettig, 2012;Olivers, Huettig, Singh, & Mishra, 2014). This could bring serious confounds into the study since the level of education has been shown to play a significant role in modulating bilingual advantage (Gollan et al, 2011).…”

Literacy effects on language and vision: Emergent effects from an amodal shared resource (ASR) computational model

“…However, such effects do not seem to be driven purely by low level perceptual differences. A more recent study examining visual search behaviour in literate and illiterate groups also observed slower performance in illiterate groups (Olivers, Huettig, Singh, & Mishra, 2014), yet demonstrated that the observed difference in behaviour was largely accounted for by low literates needing more time between fixating the target and producing a required motor response. A possible explanation for this consistent reduction in performance displayed by illiterates across many cognitive domains would be that literacy leads to a general increase in efficiency of cognitive processing.…”