Cross-cultural Differences in Special Character Perception – an Exploratory Study

The research into cognitive diversity influenced by writing systems is starting to explore effects of European and East-Asian languages and character systems on cognition. However, African languages remain unexplored. Reading experience is different in Latin alphabet, Chinese logographic characters and Amharic syllabary. This study addresses variation of character perception by European, Chinese, and Ethiopian information technology students. Working memory performance was tested for numbers, letters, and special characters. Preliminary results indicate that a person’s native character system affects the ability to memorize different types of characters. Working memory load seems to increase during the processing of less familiar characters.