When does rotation disrupt letter encoding? Testing the resilience of letter detectors in the initial moments of processing.

Previous research has reported that both letter and word identification are slower when the stimuli are presented at rotations above 45° than when presented in their canonical horizontal view. Indeed, influential models of word recognition posit that letter detectors in the visual word recognition system are disrupted by rotation angles above 40° or 45° (e.g.

Does visual letter similarity modulate masked form priming in young readers of Arabic?

We carried out a masked priming lexical decision experiment to study whether visual letter similarity plays a role during the initial phases of word processing in young readers of Arabic (fifth graders). Arabic is ideally suited to test these effects because most Arabic letters share their basic shape with at least one other letter and differ only in the number/position of diacritical points (e.g.

Do Diacritical Marks Play a Role at the Early Stages of Word Recognition in Arabic?

A crucial question in the domain of visual word recognition is whether letter similarity plays a role in the early stages of visual word processing. Here we focused on Arabic because in this language there are various groups of letters that share the same basic shape and only differ in the number/location of diacritical points. We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which a target word was preceded by: (i) an identity prime; (ii) a prime in which the critical letter was replaced by a letter with the same shape that differed in the number of diacritics (e.

Are root letters compulsory for lexical access in Semitic languages? The case of masked form-priming in Arabic.

Do Semitic and Indo-European languages differ at a qualitative level? Recently, it has been claimed that lexical space in Semitic languages (e.g., Hebrew, Arabic) is mainly determined by morphological constraints, while lexical space in Indo-European languages is mainly determined by orthographic constraints (Frost, Kugler, Deutsch, & Forster, 2005).

Neural correlates of visual versus abstract letter processing in Roman and Arabic scripts.

In alphabetic orthographies, letter identification is a critical process during the recognition of visually presented words. In the present experiment, we examined whether and when visual form influences letter processing in two very distinct alphabets (Roman and Arabic). Disentangling visual versus abstract letter representations was possible because letters in the Roman alphabet may look visually similar/dissimilar in lowercase and uppercase forms (e.

Early access to abstract representations in developing readers: evidence from masked priming.

A commonly shared assumption in the field of visual-word recognition is that retinotopic representations are rapidly converted into abstract representations. Here we examine the role of visual form vs. abstract representations during the early stages of word processing - as measured by masked priming - in young children (3rd and 6th Graders) and adult readers.

Priming of abstract letter representations may be universal: the case of Arabic.

Recent research on the Roman alphabet has demonstrated that the magnitudes of masked repetition priming are equivalent for letter pairs that have similar visual features across cases (e.g., c-C) and for letter pairs with dissimilar features (e.

Physical similarity (and not quantity representation) drives perceptual comparison of numbers: evidence from two Indian notations.

Numerical quantity seems to affect the response in any task that involves numbers, even in tasks that do not demand access to quantity (e.g., perceptual tasks).

Masked priming effects are modulated by expertise in the script.

In a recent study using a masked priming same-different matching task, Garcı´a-Orza, Perea, and Munoz (2010) found a transposition priming effect for letter strings, digit strings, and symbol strings, but not for strings of pseudoletters (i.e., EPRI-ERPI produced similar response times to the control pair EDBI-ERPI).

The search for an input-coding scheme: transposed-letter priming in Arabic.

Two key issues for models of visual word recognition are the specification of an input-coding scheme and whether these input-coding schemes vary across orthographies. Here, we report two masked-priming lexical decision experiments that examined whether the ordering of the root letters plays a key role in producing transposed-letter effects in Arabic--a language characterized by non-concatenative morphology. In Experiment 1, letter transpositions involved two letters from the root, whereas in Experiment 2, letter transpositions involved one letter from the root and one letter from the word pattern.

The G428A nonsense mutation in FUT2 provides strong but not absolute protection against symptomatic GII.4 Norovirus infection.

In November 2004, 116 individuals in an elderly nursing home in El Grao de Castellón, Spain were symptomatically infected with genogroup II.4 (GII.4) norovirus.

Sequential evolution of genotype GII.4 norovirus variants causing gastroenteritis outbreaks from 2001 to 2006 in Eastern Spain.

Noroviruses are the most common cause of outbreaks of viral gastroenteritis worldwide. Norovirus outbreaks were surveyed in Catalonia and the region of Valencia (Eastern Spain) between January 2001 and December 2006 as part of the European Union funded network "Food-borne viruses in Europe". During this time the etiology and epidemiological features of 194 outbreaks of acute non-bacterial gastroenteritis were investigated and norovirus was identified as causing 169 (87.