Mirror generalization for reversible vs. nonreversible letters: Evidence from ERPs

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marta Vergara-Martinez ◽  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Nandini Nittur ◽  
Tamara Y. Swaab
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Generalization

scholarly journals A Synoptic and Theoretical Account of Character (Digits and Capital Letters) Reversal in Writings by Typically Developing Children

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Fischer ◽  
Christophe Luxembourger
Keyword(s):  
Educational Psychology ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Left Hand ◽  
Comprehensive Theory ◽  
Early Visual Processing ◽  
Mirror Generalization ◽  
Hand Writing ◽  
Neuropsychological Findings

Reversing characters (digits and letters) when writing, and complete mirror writing, raise one of the oldest and most mysterious questions in developmental and educational psychology: Why do five-year-old children write symbols (e.g., ꓱ for E) they have neither learnt nor seen? Attempts to draw up a complete explanatory theory of character reversal in writings by typically developing children were long hindered by the existence of a seemingly satisfactory explanation (left-hand writing), the failure to bring together research in neuropsychology and educational psychology, and the failure to consider the shape and structure of the characters. The present paper remedies this situation by describing a new, comprehensive theory based on recent neuropsychological findings and extensive empirical observations. The theory assumes that a character’s orientation, detected in the early visual processing area, is deleted (or made inaccessible) by the mirror generalization process during transfer to memory. Consequently, there is a period, usually around age five, during which children have representations of the characters’ shapes but not their orientations. Hence, when asked to write a character, children have to improvise its orientation, and the orientation they choose (implicitly, non-consciously) is often derived from the writing direction in their culture.

Overcoming Mirror Errors in Reading Is Rooted on Learning to Inhibit Mirror Generalization for Letters

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregoire Borst ◽  
Emmanuel Ahr ◽  
Margot Roell ◽  
Olivier Houde
Keyword(s):  
Mirror Generalization

Suppression of mirror generalization for reversible letters: Evidence from masked priming

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Perea ◽  
Carmen Moret-Tatay ◽  
Victoria Panadero
Keyword(s):  
Masked Priming ◽  
Mirror Generalization

The Learning Brain

2016 ◽  
Vol 224 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Ahr ◽  
Grégoire Borst ◽  
Olivier Houdé
Keyword(s):  
Inhibitory Control ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Visual Recognition ◽  
Brain Area ◽  
Darwinian Evolution ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Visual Word Form Area ◽  
General Law ◽  
Mirror Generalization ◽  
School Training

Abstract. Reading is an example of complex learning specific to human beings. In readers, an area of the brain is dedicated to the visual processing of letters and words, referred to as the visual word form area (VWFA). The existence of this brain area is paradoxical. Reading is too recent to be a phylogenic product of Darwinian evolution. It likely develops with intense school training via a neuroplastic ontogenic process of neuronal recycling: neurons in the lateral occipitotemporal lobe originally tuned to the visual recognition of stimuli, such as faces, objects, and animals, will be recycled for the visual recognition of letters and words. Thus, the VWFA inherits the intrinsic properties of these neurons, notably, mirror generalization, a process (or heuristic) applied to all visual stimuli that enables the recognition of a stimulus irrespective of its left-right orientation. On its own, this inherited property is not adapted to reading because it makes children confuse mirror letters, such as b and d in the Latin alphabet. In this article, we present evidence that inhibitory control is critical to avoid mirror errors inherited from the neuronal recycling process by blocking the mirror generalization heuristic in the context of reading. We subsequently argue that the “neuronal recycling + inhibitory control” law constitutes a general law of the learning brain by demonstrating that it may also account for the development of numeracy.

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