The effects of typeface differences on visual word recognition

Background The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether, and bow, the typeface would affect single-word recognition processing in Japanese learning English as a second language. Methods. The 13 participants were right-handed university students, brought-up and educated in Japan, whose English skills were of an advanced level. A series of experiments with visual oddball tasks were conducted to obtain the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P300. Four different type-faces were used for the stimuli to compare regular types (serif vs. sans-serif) vs. script types (square vs. cursive). Results. We obtained a fairly clear MMN presenting two peaks under all the typeface conditions. The distribution and the amplitudes of the early portion showed hemispheric differences between the regular and the script typeface conditions. There were significant differences in the peak latencies of both MMN and P300, depending on the typeface conditions. Conclusions. A mismatch negativity can be elicited in the visual modality as well as the auditory modality. Typeface differences of the visual stimuli exert an influence on the automatic process of change detection indexed by the MMN and the controlled process of stimulus evaluation reflected in the P300, in single-word recognition processing.