Thanks for posting this, Peter. Very interesting.

It makes sense, of course, that over the long period in which, as Bringhurst notes, everyone who was a reader was also a writer, the reading process would have harnessed a motor gesture decoding system. A lot of interesting questions arise from this, especially with regard to the variable balance of visual and gestural pathways in the context changing text cultures. Are we, for instance, in the midst of a change in that balance due to the relative infrequency of handwriting and its secondary role in text creation in our culture?

Thanks Peter.

One question in regard to this statement: Indeed, recent developmental data show that reading acquisition is facilitated when young children are taught to write or finger-trace the letter shapes compared with classical grapho-phonemic teaching without a haptic component.

Would the haptic component also be enhanced by letting children learn to write (i’m speaking of Latin languages/scripts now) their script with a broad-nibbed pen to better distinguish the pattern of letters? Nowadays they have to write their letters (very close to printed letters with almost no handwritten origin) with ballpoint pens showing no stroke contrasts, resulting in writing and reading difficulties.
Or am i moving too far from the above thesis?

At last, scientific proof that English is the most advanced language!
This ties in with the “harder to read makes you smarter” research.

But seriously, such biological measurement of cultural differences makes me uneasy, like phrenology.

{To Follow}

@Nick Shinn:
At last, scientific proof that English is the most advanced language!
This ties in with the “harder to read makes you smarter” research.
You fools! This is why the Chinese will leave you behind in the dust!
Ah, but Chinese characters can still be written with brushstrokes by real human beings, whereas Latin letters can only be passively viewed because of their typographic stylization - thus depriving us of an aid to learning.
One doubts that makes up for the difference between English spelling, bad as it is, and the complexities of a character-based writing system.

I’m not sure I follow “Latin letters can only be passively viewed…” What was I doing when I made my grocery list?

@Chris Dean:
What was I doing when I made my grocery list?

You're quite right, but the passage quoted did make that claim in essence: because Caslon or Times Roman is established as the normative form of the Latin alphabet, people don't get the assistance in learning it from the experience of forming the letters when writing them.

So, I suppose this means that Futura is more readable than Times Roman.

I’m still not sure I understand your position. Are you saying that in the contexts of the Latin alphabet frequency of exposure to Times/Caslon nullifies the brains ability to form a connection between the processes of reading and writing because the average person’s handwriting doesn’t have serifs?

If that were true, could I not point to the subtle differences between a Chinese character rendered by brush strokes compared to something mechanical, and make the same argument?

This wasn't my position, I was merely echoing what was in the original excerpt:

Some writing systems, such as Chinese, Japanese, or Tamil, remain strongly centered on a realistic depiction of handwriting strokes, whereas others, including the Roman alphabet, are stylized to the point of using unique shapes for printed letters that even expert literates can no longer write (e.g., the shape of a printed letter g).

So, if this were true, our script would be harder to learn, because we can't handprint the kinds of letters we're used to reading, so the haptic component in learning to read is weakened.

Actually, though, reading more of the excerpt, the haptic component is mostly important as a substitute for the dyslexic, not as a primary requisite.

we propose that cultural variability lies primarily in the different emphasis that distinct writing systems place on the visual and gestural pathways…

This is, perhaps, the single most preposterous claim ever posted in this forum…or the most brilliant. I am of two minds on the subject…

Gestural does not require thick-and-thin drawing. A line can have a gesture and be of one weight. Matisse has demonstrated this in some of his work.
Most handwriting in modern times is written with a tool that is not broadnibbed. True, weight of pressure and speed of stroke can make a line fade to some degree, even with a rapidograph.
If a child learning to write, traces the pathways of letterforms, it makes sense that this can take part in the imprinting of the form as well as the visual learning. I have a hard time seeing how this would vary with culture--Even if a given culture is more prone to using a brush instead of a ballpoint pen. It would seem that whatever makes a cultural variance is a function of the typical tool mixed with the script.

… recognizing word shapes …

This from the paper’s title.
Are the researchers not familiar with the state of the art in reading science?

Cognitive psychologist Kevin Larson, Reading Researcher at Microsoft Corporation, has concluded that:
“Word shape is no longer a viable model of word recognition. The bulk of scientific evidence says that we recognize a word’s component letters.”

—Kevin Larson, The Science of Word Recognition, Eye magazine, Summer 2004

Nick, I don't think they mean word shape in the sense of a whole word unitised recognition model. Their text refers to 'orthographic decoding system', which suggests something squarely within the letter-to-word recognition model.

Right, but it’s nonetheless a faux pas to use the phrase “…recognizing word shapes…” in the title.

Yes. I think they mean simply 'recognising words'.

Nick, Nick, Nick…

Your “component letters” theory is so…2004. Surely, in the ensuing nine years, the ideographic theory has regained some of its lustre (a tip o’ the Hatlo hat to the Brits in the forum), if not panache , élan and/or joie de vivre (likewise to the Frenchies).

In the end, how we read has nothing to do with what shapes culture; it’s what we read, and—increasingly—what we don’t read but are incessantly exposed to, that shapes culture…such as it is…