Effects of spatial attention and familiarity on visual word recognition during reading

Abstract

The behavior named reading has not been natural to the human species. It rather was acquired with the evolutionary processes and requirements. This brings to our notice two things. First, that it is an evolved behavior, thus it is active and has elements of dynamicity, making it requirement governed interactive process. Second, that since the brain was not naturally wired for it, yet it evolved then there must be certain areas, majorly important and contributing to it. The later, derives its support from the literature of brain studies involving imaging techniques for normal as well as brain damage cases. The most relevant ones happen to be visual cortex, the angular and supramarginal gyrus, frontal and temporal lobes. Here to our research interest is the former consideration. The active and dynamic nature of reading. Since, reading is an active interaction between a reader and the text. This involves a tradeoff between the visual and the nonvisual information. Visual that we derive from the input material and nonvisual referring to the information stored behind the eyes, in the brain. newline