Literacy acquisition reduces the influence of automatic holistic processing of faces and houses

• Type: Article in International Scientific Journal
• Date: 2013

Authors

Paulo Ventura (Author) Other; Tânia Fernandes (Author) FPCEUP; Laurent Cohen (Author) Other; José Morais (Author) Other; Régine Kolinsky (Author) Other; Stanislas Dehaene (Author) Other

Journal

Title: Neuroscience Letters

Vol. 554

Pages: 105-109

ISSN: 0304-3940

Publisher: Elsevier

Indexing

ISI Web of Knowledge

ISI Web of Science

Scopus - 2 Citations

Other information

Authenticus ID: P-008-EG9

DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2013.08.068

Abstract (EN): Writing was invented too recently to have influenced the human genome. Consequently, reading acquisition must rely on partial recycling of pre-existing brain systems. Prior fMRI evidence showed that in literates a left-hemispheric visual region increases its activation to written strings relative to illiterates and reduces its response to faces. Increasing literacy also leads to a stronger right-hemispheric lateralization for faces. Here, we evaluated whether this reorganization of the brain's face system has behavioral consequences for the processing of non-linguistic visual stimuli. Three groups of adult illiterates, ex-illiterates and literates were tested with the sequential composite face paradigm that evaluates the automaticity with which faces are processed as wholes. Illiterates were consistently more holistic than participants with reading experience in dealing with faces. A second experiment replicated this effect with both faces and houses. Brain reorganization induced by literacy seems to reduce the influence of automatic holistic processing of faces and houses by enabling the use of a more analytic and flexible processing strategy, at least when holistic processing is detrimental to the task. © 2013 Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

Language: English

Type (Professor's evaluation): Scientific

Notes: <a href="http://gateway.isiknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcAuth=Alerting&SrcApp=Alerting&DestApp=WOS&DestLinkType=FullRecord&KeyUT= 000327674600020 ">Acesso à Web of Science</a> <br> <a href="http://www.scopus.com/record/display.url?eid=2-s2.0-84884728505&origin=resultslist">Acesso à Scopus</a>

No. of pages: 5