Language, Cognition and Neuroscience The early visual processing in alphasyllabic and alphabetic orthographies: a comparative cortical ERP study

Varghese Peter; Shivani Tiwari; Aju Abraham; Gopee Krishnan

doi:10.1080/23273798.2026.2731600

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Language, Cognition and Neuroscience The early visual processing in alphasyllabic and alphabetic orthographies: a comparative cortical ERP study

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Language, Cognition and Neuroscience The early visual processing in alphasyllabic and alphabetic orthographies: a comparative cortical ERP study

Varghese Peter, Shivani Tiwari, Aju Abraham and Gopee Krishnan

Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, Vol.Advanced access

2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2026.2731600

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Abstract

Cognitive and computational psychology

Behavioural neuroscience

Expanding knowledge in psychology

Orthography

Alphasyllabic

Hindi

Print exposure

The written characters of various orthographies vary considerably in their visual complexity. The alphasyllabic orthography of Indian languages is visually more complex than the alphabetic orthography (e.g. English). We investigated the early processing of these orthographies through an implicit visual processing task. Our participants watched the screen for dot patterns interspersed with words in Hindi and English, while EEG signals were simultaneously recorded. As a control condition, we included nonorthographic Symbols in the trial series. The literature-driven analysis of ERPs showed differential responses to English compared with Hindi. English words elicited a shorter latency and (left-hemisphere-specific) enhanced N1 amplitude than Hindi words. The data-driven analysis revealed a significant negativity between 220–280 ms at P7 and 232–252 ms at P8 for English words. These results showed that coarse neural tuning for print is sensitive to orthography, and that print exposure may modulate early brain responses to text.

Details

Title: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience The early visual processing in alphasyllabic and alphabetic orthographies: a comparative cortical ERP study
Authors: Varghese Peter (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast
Shivani Tiwari (Author) - Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal
Aju Abraham (Author) - Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal
Gopee Krishnan (Corresponding Author) - Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal
Publication details: Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, Vol.Advanced access
Publisher: Routledge
Date published: 2026
DOI: 10.1080/23273798.2026.2731600
ISSN: 2327-3801
Copyright note: © 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
Grant note: This work was supported by Cognitive Science Research Initiative, Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India.
Organisation Unit: Healthy Ageing Research Cluster; School of Health - Psychology
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991267096202621
Output Type: Journal article

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