Visual knowledge underlying letter perception: font-specific, schematic tuning

Abstract

The representation of visual information about letters is proposed to be highly systematic, involving not only abstract information that is invariant across type faces (or fonts), but also a number of parameters whose values are determined by the current font. The system exploits regularities that are characteristic of letters and fonts by becoming tuned to the details of the font. This should result in efficient letter perception when the stimuli are regular (when all of the letters are of a consistent font), but not when the stimuli are irregular (when the letters are from a variety of fonts). The prediction of faster processing with a regular font, as compared with a mixed font, was examined in three experiments requiring the recognition of four-letter strings. Experiment 1 confirmed the prediction, and Experiment 2 replicated the effect with the number of "features" equated across conditions. Experiment 3 showed that the disadvantage for a mixture of fonts is related to how much the representational system must be adjusted to handle the different fonts.