Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 25, 2026

Interaction between Phonological and Semantic Processes in Visual Word Recognition using Electrophysiology
Published on: June 29, 2021
The role of invariant line junctions in object and visual word recognition
Marcin Szwed1, Laurent Cohen, Emilie Qiao
1INSERM, Cognitive Neuro-imaging Unit, IFR49 Gif sur Yvette, France. mfszwed@gmail.com
Abstract:
Object recognition relies heavily on invariant visual features such as the manner in which lines meet at vertices to form viewpoint-invariant junctions (e.g. T, L). We wondered whether these features also underlie readers' competence for fast recognition of printed words. Since reading is far too recent to have exerted any evolutionary pressure on brain evolution, visual word recognition might be based on pre-existing mechanisms common to all visual object recognition. In a naming task, we presented partially deleted pictures of objects and printed words in which either the vertices or the line midsegments were preserved. Subjects showed an identical pattern of behavior with both objects and words: they made fewer errors and were faster to respond when vertices were preserved. Our results suggest that vertex invariants are used for object recognition and that this evolutionarily ancient mechanism is being co-opted for reading.
Related Concept Videos
Perceptual Constancy
Size constancy is the recognition that an object remains the same size, even when its image on the retina changes. For instance, a bus is perceived to be large enough to carry people, even if it looks tiny from...
Visual System
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...
Structural Classification of Joints
A fibrous joint is where the adjacent bones are united by fibrous connective...
Visual Agnosia
Vision
Gestalt Principles of Perception

