How the language you speak changes what you see: Study

Wednesday 30 Mar 2016 - 11:14 Makkah mean time-21-6-1437

Image from Johns Hopkins University

Maryland, (IINA) - According to a new study from Johns Hopkins University, a person’s familiarity with an object - in particular with letters of the alphabet - will influence the features they notice, Mail Online reported.
By studying the varying ways people perceive an alphabet, the researchers found that expertise helps to sort out the features that don’t matter, leaving novices to view letters as more complex.
Researchers tracked the responses of 50 participants who were asked to determine whether pairs of Arabic letters were different or the same.
In the group, 25 of these people were experts in Arabic, while the other 25 didn’t know the language.
The team showed participants 2,000 pairs of letters, measuring answers for speed and accuracy.
While novices were found to point out differences more quickly, experts of the language were more accurate in their selections.
As letters became more complex, decision time slowed for novices. The opposite was true for experts.
For letters with more complex features, including horizontals and curves, experts were better at making the distinctions.
‘You might assume we have basic vision machinery and that you could detect features of different letters even if you didn’t know the language. But that’s not the case,’ said senior author Brend Rapp, a professor in the university’s Department of Cognitive Sciences.
‘What you know affects how you see things.’
The researchers analyzed these results using hierarchical clustering, sorting the letters that looked similar to novices and to experts.
While certain letters showed overall agreement, the researchers say some varied greatly in the sorting, and the letters that confused novices looked nothing like the ones that the experts made mistakes on.
‘When you become an expert in reading an alphabet, what does that change? Does your visual system see the same thing as a beginner? We say no,’ Wiley said.
‘If you’re an expert, things that look complex to a novice look simple to you.’
The researchers explain that experts are biased by other, non-visual factors, including the names of letters, how they’re written, or the way they sound.
While the study focuses on the alphabet, the researchers say it has much greater implications.
‘What we find should hold true for any sort of object – cars, birds, faces. Expertise matters. It changes how you perceive things,’ Wiley said.
‘Part of being an expert is learning what matters and what doesn’t matter – including visual features. You know what to look for.’
SM/IINA

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