Abstract
PURPOSE: Reading a prescription incorrectly may cause serious accidents in some cases. People who experience the same pattern repeatedly create a fixed pattern in their minds. It is possible that such fixations, formed from prior empirical contexts, contribute to reading errors. The author demonstrated this hypothetical cause of reading errors in two experiments.
METHOD: In two experiments with two conditions each, the author asked the participants to transcribe 10 handwritten percentage digits. The seventh digit was the target digit and was the same for both conditions in both experiments. For experiment 1, the author prepared a double digits condition consisting of all double digits, except the target, and a single digits condition consisting of all single digits. For experiment 2, he prepared two conditions, in which single and double digits were mixed half-and-half. The difference between the conditions was the previous digit of the target. A single digit preceded the target in one condition and a double digit preceded the target in the other condition.
RESULTS: In the experiments, the participants tended to misread the target as “50%” although it was “5%” in reality. Because the left-hand “o” of the “%” was large, they mistook it as zero (0). More participants in the double digits condition misread the target than those in the single digit condition in the experiment 1, and did than those in the each mix digits condition of the experiment 2.
CONCLUSION: The results indicate that not only misleading objects but also the fixation formed from prior empirical context raise the rate of occurrence of misreading.
