Letter recognition: considerations about mirroring and topologic variation in the initial phase of reading learning

Abstract

In order to enrich the theoretical bases that exist in the area of reading and literacy, this article gives a brief presentation of the initial results of an investigation on mirroring for letter recognition. It is essentially based on Dehaene’s (2007) neuroscientific discoveries, within the area of Experimental Psycholinguistics. The subjects, five illiterate adults, underwent six learning sessions of a system of twelve graphemes related to twelve syllables. Pre-testing, intermediate and post-testing batteries were applied, aiming to investigate whether the difficulty in mirroring graphemes desymmetrization is greater than the difficulty in distinguishing topologically similar graphemes in reading. The qualitative analysis of the data collected indicates great difficulty in desymmetrization for the recognition of the difference between mirror-image graphemes in the initial phase of reading the sillabary, although a system made up solely of topologically similar graphemes is more complex to learn.