If you want your writing to be remembered, use a disfluent font
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1
University of South Australia, Psychology, Australia
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2
University of South Australia, School of Art, Architecture and Design, Australia
Word processing programs present their users with an abundance of choice in the fonts available to format their writing. While users may seek to find a clear and fluent font to format their work in, recent results have shown that writing that is formatted in disfluent fonts is remembered more accurately than material formatted in fluent fonts. We investigated the effect of font on the early processing of alphabet letters by examining the N1 event-related potential component. The N1 is an index of attentional processes in which stimuli that better capture attention evoke a greater amplitude. We recorded electroencephalography from 18 participants who completed a one-back task, matching letters of the alphabet that were written in fluent and disfluent fonts. Analysis showed that the N1 component was larger for the disfluent fonts across hemispheres and for both target and update letters. Additionally, for the update letters, this increase was larger in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere. These results indicate that material written in disfluent fonts captures attention more than material written in fluent fonts. Hence, the finding that memory is greater for information written in disfluent fonts is likely due to the increased attention captured by the disfluent fonts at the time of encoding. Importantly, because the increased N1 following disfluent fonts was greater in the left hemisphere, these results suggest that disfluency increases activation in language processing regions of the brain as early as 150 milliseconds after the presentation of the stimulus.
Keywords:
Font,
ERP,
Attention,
Memory,
N1
Conference:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster Presentation
Topic:
Language
Citation:
Churches
O,
Kohler
M,
Coussens
S,
Thiessen
M and
Keage
H
(2012). If you want your writing to be remembered, use a disfluent font.
Conference Abstract:
ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00025
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Received:
25 Oct 2012;
Published Online:
07 Nov 2012.
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Correspondence:
Dr. Owen Churches, University of South Australia, Psychology, Magill, South Australia, 5072, Australia, owen.churches@unisa.edu.au