Do we always see the forest before the trees? The global precedence effect in English native speakers with Roman and Thai Navon letters
-
1
Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences
-
2
Department of Psychological Science, School of Health and Human Sciences, Southern Cross University, Australia
Aim: Reading acquisition is a prerequisite of functioning in modern day existence as we live in a data driven society. Paying attention to the bigger picture is an evolutionary survival response achieved via a global processing mechanism in human cognition. This level of attention can be problematic when children are learning to read or are dyslexic, as reading requires local and analytic processing to focus on the letters that make up a word. The study investigated if priming moderates global and local processing in English speakers with Roman and Thai Navon compound letters. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether global and local priming could moderate English speaker’s processing of Roman and Thai Navon letters. The Global Precedence Effect (GPE) is evidence of holistic processing, characterized by a global advantage (faster responses at the global level) and asymmetric congruence (global to local interference). Based on previous research, it was predicted that there would be a global precedence effect for the face priming condition but not the letter priming condition. Method: Forty-six native English speakers living in Australia (18 males, 28 females) were subjected to a priming task, either a face sorting (global priming condition) or letter identification (local priming condition) task, prior to participating in the Navon experiment. Results: The results revealed a robust GPE in both priming conditions revealing that the native English speakers were processing Roman and Thai Navon letters in a more holistic manner. Conclusion: The priming conditions did not have an influence on local/global processing of the Navon letters. In fact, a robust GPE was found for both familiar Roman letters and unfamiliar Thai letters. Even though the letters were presented in central vision and were in a font size typical for reading, a GPE still emerged for the Roman letters.
Keywords:
holistic processing,
Global precedence effect,
Roman letters,
Thai letters,
Navon compound letters,
reading,
global advantage
Conference:
15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference , Coffs Harbour, Australia, 4 Oct - 5 Oct, 2018.
Presentation Type:
Research
Topic:
Abstract for 15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference
Citation:
Watts
R and
Winskel
H
(2019). Do we always see the forest before the trees? The global precedence effect in English native speakers with Roman and Thai Navon letters.
Front. Psychol.
Conference Abstract:
15th Annual Psychology Honours Research Conference .
doi: 10.3389/conf.fpsyg.2018.74.00037
Copyright:
The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers.
They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters.
The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated.
Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed.
For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions.
Received:
18 Sep 2018;
Published Online:
27 Sep 2019.
*
Correspondence:
Ms. Rebecca Watts, Southern Cross University, Psychology, School of Health and Human Sciences, Coffs Harbour, r.watts.14@student.scu.edu.au