If you want your writing to be remembered, use a disfluent font

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event If you want your writing to be remembered, use a disfluent font Owen Churches1*, Mark Kohler1, Scott Coussens1, Myra Thiessen2 and Hannah Keage1 1 University of South Australia, Psychology, Australia 2 University of South Australia, School of Art, Architecture and Design, Australia Word processing programs present their users with an abundance of choice in the fonts available to format their writing. While users may seek to find a clear and fluent font to format their work in, recent results have shown that writing that is formatted in disfluent fonts is remembered more accurately than material formatted in fluent fonts. We investigated the effect of font on the early processing of alphabet letters by examining the N1 event-related potential component. The N1 is an index of attentional processes in which stimuli that better capture attention evoke a greater amplitude. We recorded electroencephalography from 18 participants who completed a one-back task, matching letters of the alphabet that were written in fluent and disfluent fonts. Analysis showed that the N1 component was larger for the disfluent fonts across hemispheres and for both target and update letters. Additionally, for the update letters, this increase was larger in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere. These results indicate that material written in disfluent fonts captures attention more than material written in fluent fonts. Hence, the finding that memory is greater for information written in disfluent fonts is likely due to the increased attention captured by the disfluent fonts at the time of encoding. Importantly, because the increased N1 following disfluent fonts was greater in the left hemisphere, these results suggest that disfluency increases activation in language processing regions of the brain as early as 150 milliseconds after the presentation of the stimulus. Keywords: Font, ERP, Attention, Memory, N1 Conference: ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference, Brisbane, Australia, 29 Nov - 2 Dec, 2012. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Language Citation: Churches O, Kohler M, Coussens S, Thiessen M and Keage H (2012). If you want your writing to be remembered, use a disfluent font. Conference Abstract: ACNS-2012 Australasian Cognitive Neuroscience Conference. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2012.208.00025 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 25 Oct 2012; Published Online: 07 Nov 2012. * Correspondence: Dr. Owen Churches, University of South Australia, Psychology, Magill, South Australia, 5072, Australia, owen.churches@unisa.edu.au Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Owen Churches Mark Kohler Scott Coussens Myra Thiessen Hannah Keage Google Owen Churches Mark Kohler Scott Coussens Myra Thiessen Hannah Keage Google Scholar Owen Churches Mark Kohler Scott Coussens Myra Thiessen Hannah Keage PubMed Owen Churches Mark Kohler Scott Coussens Myra Thiessen Hannah Keage Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.