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From complexity to distinctiveness: The effect of expertise on letter perception.

ABSTRACT: Fluent, adult readers of alphabetic languages encounter hundreds of millions of individual letters. What is the impact of such extensive experience on the perception and identification of letters? Recent evidence indicates that expert and naïve observers perceive letters differently. Here, we focus on the relationship between expertise and letter complexity (number of visual features) and distinctiveness (overlap in features with the other letters of the alphabet). Using a same-different letter judgement task, we examined the performance of individuals with high levels of expertise with Roman letters, but with different amounts of experience with the Arabic alphabet. The results reveal a trade-off between letter complexity and distinctiveness, such that while naïve individuals are sensitive only to letter complexity and not distinctiveness, the opposite is true for individuals with high expertise with an alphabet. These findings reveal a learning trajectory in which, with increasing experience, the influence of letter complexity is supplanted by distinctiveness, which requires an understanding of the relationship of each letter to the other possible letter shapes in the alphabet as a whole.

SUBMITTER: Wiley RW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6535374 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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From complexity to distinctiveness: The effect of expertise on letter perception.

Wiley Robert W RW Rapp Brenda B

Psychonomic bulletin & review 20190601 3

Fluent, adult readers of alphabetic languages encounter hundreds of millions of individual letters. What is the impact of such extensive experience on the perception and identification of letters? Recent evidence indicates that expert and naïve observers perceive letters differently. Here, we focus on the relationship between expertise and letter complexity (number of visual features) and distinctiveness (overlap in features with the other letters of the alphabet). Using a same-different letter ...[more]

PMID: 30478777

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Project description:BackgroundPerception of stimuli presented in a virtual dentistry environment affects regions of the brain that are related to pain perception.ObjectiveWe investigated whether neural correlates of virtual pain perception are affected by education in dentistry.MethodsIn this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, a sample of 20 dental students and 20 age-matched controls viewed and listened to video clips presenting a dental treatment from the first-person perspective. An anxiety questionnaire was used to assess the level of dental anxiety. Neural correlates of pain perception were investigated through classic general linear model analysis and in-house classification methods.ResultsDental students and naïve controls exhibited similar anxiety levels for invasive stimuli. Invasive dentistry scenes evoked a less affective component of pain in dental students compared with naïve controls (P<.001). Reduced affective pain perception went along with suppressed brain activity in pain matrix regions including the insula, anterior cingulate cortex, and basal ganglia. Furthermore, a substantial reduction of brain activity was observed in motor-related regions, particularly the supplementary motor area, premotor cortex, and basal ganglia. Within this context, a classifier analysis based on neural activity in the nucleus lentiformis could identify dental students and controls on the individual subject level in 85% of the cases (34 out of 40 participants, sensitivity=90%, specificity=80%).ConclusionsVirtual dental treatment activates pain-related brain regions in controls. By contrast, dental students suppress affective and motor-related aspects of pain. We speculate that dental students learn to control motoric aspects of pain perception during their education because it is a prerequisite for the professional manual treatment of patients. We discuss that a specific set of learning mechanisms might affect perceived self-efficacy of dental students, which in turn might reduce their affective component of pain perception.

Dataset Information

From complexity to distinctiveness: The effect of expertise on letter perception.

Publications

From complexity to distinctiveness: The effect of expertise on letter perception.

Similar Datasets

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