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A method for studying the contextual similarity of characters in Cyrillic, Devanagari, and Latin scripts and exploration of the effects of typeface design and expertise.

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Title: A method for studying the contextual similarity of characters in Cyrillic, Devanagari, and Latin scripts and exploration of the effects of typeface design and expertise.
Authors: Březina, David (AUTHOR)
Source: Visual Cognition. Aug2025, Vol. 33 Issue 7, p437-457. 21p.
Subjects: Reading, Language & languages, Task performance, Research funding, Data analysis, Questionnaires, Decision making, Descriptive statistics, Mann Whitney U Test, Statistics, Visual perception, Reaction time, Judgment (Psychology), Confidence intervals, Data analysis software, Cognition, Thought & thinking
Abstract: Although perceptual similarity is highly contextual, visual similarity of characters (letters) is typically investigated using stimuli that do not control for contextual effects, e.g., comparison of pairs, identification of single characters. Moreover, most character similarity studies focus on a single typeface (font) or study under conditions that are detrimental to the quality of the designs (e.g., low resolution or low contrast), which makes it challenging to generalize their findings. To obtain data that permit a more detailed and realistic enquiry of character similarity relationships, the study reported in this paper used a contextual similarity task. Participants were presented with character triplets and asked to pick the odd one out, thus judging the remaining characters as more similar. To demonstrate the method's robustness and transferability across scripts, this cognitively simple yet challenging task was used with a diverse selection of typefaces, world scripts, and participants (n = 1721). The results showed that the contextual similarity task is sensitive to the effects of typeface design and elicits similarity judgements that are hard to predict using pairwise data. Comparisons across groups of participants showed effects of design expertise, nativity, and fluency in relevant scripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Copyright of Visual Cognition is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database: Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection
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  Data: A method for studying the contextual similarity of characters in Cyrillic, Devanagari, and Latin scripts and exploration of the effects of typeface design and expertise.
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  Data: Although perceptual similarity is highly contextual, visual similarity of characters (letters) is typically investigated using stimuli that do not control for contextual effects, e.g., comparison of pairs, identification of single characters. Moreover, most character similarity studies focus on a single typeface (font) or study under conditions that are detrimental to the quality of the designs (e.g., low resolution or low contrast), which makes it challenging to generalize their findings. To obtain data that permit a more detailed and realistic enquiry of character similarity relationships, the study reported in this paper used a contextual similarity task. Participants were presented with character triplets and asked to pick the odd one out, thus judging the remaining characters as more similar. To demonstrate the method's robustness and transferability across scripts, this cognitively simple yet challenging task was used with a diverse selection of typefaces, world scripts, and participants (n = 1721). The results showed that the contextual similarity task is sensitive to the effects of typeface design and elicits similarity judgements that are hard to predict using pairwise data. Comparisons across groups of participants showed effects of design expertise, nativity, and fluency in relevant scripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
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  Data: <i>Copyright of Visual Cognition is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract.</i> (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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      – SubjectFull: Task performance
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      – TitleFull: A method for studying the contextual similarity of characters in Cyrillic, Devanagari, and Latin scripts and exploration of the effects of typeface design and expertise.
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              Text: Aug2025
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