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Cited by 63Reading and Literacy DevelopmentVisual perception and processing mechanismsPhonetics and Phonology Research

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 26 of the 26 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

A letter visual-similarity matrix for Latin-based alphabets

Open access
Simpson, Ian C., Mousikou, Petroula, Montoya, Juan Manuel, Defior, Sylvia·2013·Behavior Research Methods
DOI 10.3758/s13428-012-0271-4
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Abstract

Indicators of letter visual similarity have been used for controlling the design of empirical and neuropsychological studies and for rigorously determining the factors that underlie reading ability and literacy acquisition. Additionally, these letter similarity/confusability matrices have been useful for studies examining more general aspects of human cognition, such as perception. Despite many letter visual-similarity matrices being available, they all have two serious limitations if they are to be used by researchers in the reading domain: (1) They have been constructed using atypical reading data obtained from speeded reading-aloud tasks and/or under degraded presentation conditions; (2) they only include letters from the English alphabet. Although some letter visual-similarity matrices have been constructed using data gathered from normal reading conditions, these either are based on old fonts, which may not resemble the letters found in modern print, or were never published. For the first time, this article presents a comprehensive letter visual-similarity/confusability matrix that has been constructed based on untimed responses to clearly presented upper- and lowercase letters that are present in many languages that use Latin-based alphabets, including Catalan, Dutch, English, French, Galician, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Such a matrix will be useful for researchers interested in the processes underpinning reading and literacy acquisition.

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  • In the real dataset, the problems with reporting means and SDs for ordinal Likert responses (distortion of estimates by response patterns) did affect the data.

    “A summary of the per-item results is presented in Fig. 12, showing that the problems we identified with reporting means and SDs for ordinal Likert responses, namely the distortion of estimates by response patterns, did affect the data.”

    From Rating norms should be calculated from cumulative link mixed effects models (2022) · cites this paper as Simpson et al. (2013)

    The Results and discussion (page unavailable) report that atypical participants’ ratings caused an apparent difference between groups that disappeared when those participants were removed. That supports the narrower point that response patterns affected this dataset, but the paper does not establish the claimed problem with reporting means and SDs for ordinal Likert responses or present the cited per-item Fig. 12 analysis. (LLM, conf=0.76)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

  • In the final analysis of the character similarity dataset, fitting a maximum likelihood model assuming homogeneity of latent variance can provide highly similar estimates of latent means to those from a Bayesian distributional model.

    “In addition, in the final analysis of the character similarity dataset (Simpson et al., 2013), we showed that fitting a maximum likelihood model assuming homogeneity of latent variance can provide highly similar estimates of latent means to those from a Bayesian distributional model.”

    From Rating norms should be calculated from cumulative link mixed effects models (2022) · cites this paper as Simpson et al., 2013

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Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. Walker, S., & Thiessen, M. (2011). Typography for children’s reading. Fonts in Focus, 8, 10–11.

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Metadata

Authors
Simpson, I. C., Mousikou, P., Montoya, J. M., & Defior, S.
Affiliations
  • Universidad de Granada (ES)
  • Bangor University (GB)
Corresponding author
Simpson, Ian C.
ORCID
Venue
Behavior Research Methods
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2012-10-06
Volume
45
Issue
2
Pages
431-439
ISSN
  • 1554-351X (ISSN-L)
  • 1554-3528
DOI
10.3758/s13428-012-0271-4
OpenAlex
W2028224258
Cited by
63
References
26
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 10 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4 · 2013: 1
FWCI
0.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
Locations
  • Behavior Research Methods (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Phonetics and Phonology Research
Keywords
reading, literacy acquisition, letter perception, reading aloud, lowercase letters, multilingual reading
MeSH terms
Dyslexia, Humans, Language, Linguistics, Neuropsychological Tests, Reading, Recognition, Psychology, Information Literacy

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