RÃ©gine Kolinsky|Tânia Fernandes
A cultural side effect: learning to read interferes with identity processing of familiar objects
Université Libre de Bruxelles|Fund for Scientific Research|University of Lisbon
based neuronal recycling hypothesis dehaene cohen 2007 examined whether reading acquisition cost recognition nonlinguistic visual materials specifically checked whether ability discriminate mirror images develops literacy acquisition interferes object identity judgments whether interference strength varies function nature nonlinguistic material aims presented illiterate late literate learned read adult age early literate adults orientationindependent identitybased samedifferent comparison task respond physically identical mirrored planerotated images pictures familiar objects experiment 1 geometric shapes experiment 2 interference irrelevant orientation variations stronger plane rotations mirror images stronger geometric shapes objects illiterates participants almost immune mirror variations familiar objects thus process unlearning mirrorimage generalization necessary acquire literacy latin alphabet cost basic function visual ventral object recognition stream ie identification familiar objects demonstrates neural recycling adaptation multiuse process least partial exaptation