Mirror reading of words and numbers: Practice and transfer effects

Abstract

It remains unknown whether mirror reading represents a genuine text processing skill or is based on recognition of visual patterns. The present study attempts to determine whether (1) systematic practice with a particular mirrored typography also improves reading performance for other mirrored typographies, and whether (2) this transfer extends from lexical to numerical material and vice versa. The results show that short-term intensive practice with mirror-reversed words significantly improves reading performance not only for the trained typography but also for other mirrored typographies and mirror-reversed Arabic digits. Practice with mirror-reversed Arabic digits showed a mixed pattern of transfer effects with regard to other digit transformations and there were no transfer effects to lexical material. Hence, for lexical material, at least, improvement after training seems to be based on generalized skill with transfer effects beyond lexical material, rather than on mere improvement of visual recognition of the material used in training.