Here's a new twist to the phrase "minding your p's and q's." Our perception of the world may be altered by our alphabet. Specifically, people unfamiliar with reverse characters seem to have difficulty distinguishing mirror images.

Eric Pederson, Ph.D., assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Oregon, examined monoliterate, biliterate and nonliterate Tamil and English speakers in southern India. Pederson showed participants a complex line drawing and three other images: a shape contained in the original drawing, the same shape reversed and an unrelated shape. He asked if the reversed or "mirror" shape was identical to the shape contained in the original drawing. Eighty-six percent of biliterates (those familiar with Tamil and Latin alphabets) successfully identified the shapes. Nonliterates and subjects who only read Tamil were successful 59 percent and 35 percent of the time.

Pederson attributes the difference to the alphabets: Unlike English, which requires readers to distinguish between "b" and "d" or "q" and "p," Tamil has no reversed characters. Without practice, Tamil readers and nonliterates do not learn to distinguish mirror images. "Nonliterates don't see the mirror images as identical in any low-level perceptual sense. They're using a higher-order categorizing scheme," explains Pederson. "The idea that reflections and nonreflections should be categorized differently—just because they are in fact visually distinct—is apparently learned." The results are published in Written Language and Literacy.

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