Native English speakers search short strings of letters differently from the way they search strings of nonalphanumeric symbols. Experiment 1 demonstrates the same contrast for native Spanish speakers. Letter search, therefore, is not a result of the peculiarities of English orthography. Since visual search is sensitive to the nature of the symbols being processed, different scripts should produce different effects. Experiments 2 and 3 confirmed such differences for Arabic and Chinese scripts. Furthermore, these experiments showed no evidence that native Arabic and native Chinese speakers adapt their search strategy when dealing with letters. Implications of these findings are considered.
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