Current layouts for alphabetic input on mobile phone keypads are very inefficient. We propose a genetic algorithm (GA) to find a suitable keypad layout for each user, based on their personal text history. It incorporates codes for frequent multigrams, which may be directly input. This greatly reduces the average number of strokes required for typing. We optimize for two-handed use, the left thu...

Is reading similarly affected by letter transposition in all alphabetic orthographies? "The Cambridge University effect", demonstrating that jumbled letters have little effect on reading, was examined using rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) in English and in Hebrew. Hebrew-English bilinguals were presented sentences in both languages containing words with transposed letters. Sentences wer...

We introduce semigroups of dominoes as a tool for working with sets of linked strings. In particular, we are interested in splicing semigroups of dominoes. In the special case of alphabetic (symbol-to-symbol linked) dominoes the splicing semigroups are essentially equivalent to the splicing systems introduced by Head to study infor-mational macromolecules, speciically to study the eeect of sets...

This narrative review discusses quantitative indices measuring differences between alphabetic languages that are related to the process of word recognition. The specific orthography that a child is acquiring has been identified as a central element influencing reading acquisition and dyslexia. However, the development of reliable metrics to measure differences between language scripts hasn't re...

In two experiments, we investigated whether visual field (VF) asymmetries of spatial cueing are involved in reading parafoveal Chinese characters. These characters are different from linearly arranged alphabetic words in that they are logograms that are confined to a constant, square-shaped area and are composed of only a few radicals. We observed a cueing effect, but it did not vary with the V...

The Benefits of Being Economics Professor A (and not Z) Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first author more often than Professor Z, will have published mo...

Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) was used to investigate how the human brain processes phonology and transforms a word's visual form (orthography) into phonological form during reading in logographic Chinese, a writing system that differs markedly from alphabetic languages. We found that reading aloud of irregular words produced larger MR signal intensity changes ov...

In alphabetic writing systems, saccade amplitude (a close correlate of reading speed) is independent of font size, presumably because an increase in the angular size of letters is compensated for by a decrease of visual acuity with eccentricity. We propose that this invariance may (also) be due to the presence of spaces between words, guiding the eyes across a large range of font sizes. Here, w...

The illusory letters phenomenon (ILP) is a unique demonstration that words can be perceived as complete even when letters are physically absent. However, the ILP has only ever been reported for a Latinate language (English), and it is unknown whether the illusion occurs for alphabetic languages with fundamentally different visual properties. Here we report a demonstration of the ILP for Arabic ...

Alphabetic name ordering on multi-authored academic papers, which is the convention in the economics discipline and various other disciplines, is to the advantage of people whose last name initials are placed early in the alphabet. As it turns out, Professor A, who has been a first author more often than Professor Z, will have published more articles and experienced a faster growth rate over th...