Learning Logographies and Alphabetic Codes

In three experiments, literate English-speaking adults learned either to identify or to extract meaning from either logographs (Blissymbols or Chinese characters) or English words written in an unfamiliar alphabetic code. Performance was substantially and reliably better in the logographic conditions than in the alphabetic conditions. Vocabulary sized ranged from 30 to 240 words per condition. In a fourth experiment, learning was slower with inconsistent mapping of graphemes to phonemes (similar to English) than with consistent mapping. These results indicate that, under a reasonably wide range of conditions, logographic writing systems may be easier to learn to read than alphabetic writing systems.