PSYC51H3 Final: PSYC51-Notes
Document Summary
Whatever wariness we might have felt about hypothesizing a face-specific recognition system came from our preference for theoretical parsimony. Unless absolutely forced by the data to posit multiple special purpose systems, we will try to get by with a single recognition system. Likewise, the idea of an orthography-specific recognition system is less parsimonious than a general-purpose system that recognizes words as well as faces, cars, and kitchen sinks, and has therefore been met with skepticism. The worse problem with the idea of an orthography-specific recognition system has to do with the nature of the category (cid:498)orthography. (cid:499) this category is entirely arbitrary and culturally transmitted. Patients with pure alexia are impaired at visual word recognition, despite. Their attempts at reading usually consist of recognizing one letter at a time, a intact auditory word compression, intact ability to produce written language, and apparently intact recognition of visual patterns other than printed words.
