Although accurate coding of letter or character identities and positions is very important for word recognition,it is well established that transposed-letter(TL)words or transposedcharacter(TC)words do not influence w...Although accurate coding of letter or character identities and positions is very important for word recognition,it is well established that transposed-letter(TL)words or transposedcharacter(TC)words do not influence word processing.However,most previous studies mainly examined TL words presented horizontally from left to right and considered less whether the same effect would occur with unusual text orientations.This paper examines the issue of whether unfamiliar text orientations would affect TL word processing when words are presented vertically from top to bottom or bottom to top,horizontally from right to left,or extremely rotated by 90°or 180°.Moreover,this paper also looks at the issue of whether readers’previous language backgrounds(monolingual vs.bilingual)and language-specific text orientations(single reading direction vs.multiple text orientations)influence TL word processing in unfamiliar circumstances.Based on the most recent evidence,this paper is in favor of the abstract letter units account which proposes that the basis of orthographic coding in skilled readers is abstract representations.Furthermore,a reconsideration from a perspective of Saussure’s conceptions of the signified and the signifier is developed.In the end,two main directions of future research are suggested:first,to the realm of bilingual TL study,with the aim to specify the key reasons why bilinguals demonstrate mixed results under unfamiliar text orientations and second,to the realm of sentence reading,in order to specify how orthographic information can be processed across longer text units other than words.展开更多
文摘Although accurate coding of letter or character identities and positions is very important for word recognition,it is well established that transposed-letter(TL)words or transposedcharacter(TC)words do not influence word processing.However,most previous studies mainly examined TL words presented horizontally from left to right and considered less whether the same effect would occur with unusual text orientations.This paper examines the issue of whether unfamiliar text orientations would affect TL word processing when words are presented vertically from top to bottom or bottom to top,horizontally from right to left,or extremely rotated by 90°or 180°.Moreover,this paper also looks at the issue of whether readers’previous language backgrounds(monolingual vs.bilingual)and language-specific text orientations(single reading direction vs.multiple text orientations)influence TL word processing in unfamiliar circumstances.Based on the most recent evidence,this paper is in favor of the abstract letter units account which proposes that the basis of orthographic coding in skilled readers is abstract representations.Furthermore,a reconsideration from a perspective of Saussure’s conceptions of the signified and the signifier is developed.In the end,two main directions of future research are suggested:first,to the realm of bilingual TL study,with the aim to specify the key reasons why bilinguals demonstrate mixed results under unfamiliar text orientations and second,to the realm of sentence reading,in order to specify how orthographic information can be processed across longer text units other than words.
