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Eric Pelzl
September 23, 2022
9:00 am

Eric Pelzl

“High Variability Orthographic Training: Learning a Complex Written System (Chinese) Using Multiple Fonts”

Dr. Eric Pelzl, Post Doctoral Fellow in the Center for Language Science at Penn State

Friday, September 23, 2022, 9:00-10:30 am, in 127 Moore and via Zoom

Across a range of human endeavors (speaking, reading, playing sports), increasing variability in training conditions can lead to improvements when compared to training in less varied conditions. In the realm of second language learning, research has often used so-called high variability phonetic training, comparing outcomes when participants learn novel speech sounds produced by one speaker or several different speakers. In this talk, Dr. Pelzl will share a new project that tested the effects of high variability orthographic training. A group of 188 participants learned the English meanings of 24 Chinese words (characters) presented in either a single font, or in several different fonts. Results support an effect of varying fonts for stronger generalization to never before seen Chinese fonts.