A Review of the Cognitive Effects of Disfluent Typography on Functional Reading

Abstract

Recent debate has seen the proposition that difficult to read, or disfluent, typefaces can improve certain learning conditions. This is counterintuitive for typography where it is the aim to support reading acts by creating texts that are as clear and as easy to read as possible. We explore recent literature on the disfluency effect in an effort to contextualize the results for typography research that is grounded in functional readability. What is evident is that the discussion about whether or not disfluent reading materials support learning is far from resolved. Further research is needed in key areas such as those related to the typographic principles of visual cuing and emphasis as well as other broader areas such as how we may be able to determine threshold for disfluency, benefit over time, and what impact environmental distractions have on the disfluency effect.

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A Review of the Cognitive Effects of Disfluent
Typography on Functional Reading
Myra Thiessen , Sofie Beier & Hannah Keage
To cite this article: Myra Thiessen , Sofie Beier & Hannah Keage (2020) A Review of the Cognitive
Effects of Disfluent Typography on Functional Reading, The Design Journal, 23:5, 797-815, DOI:
10.1080/14606925.2020.1810434
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A Review of the
Cognitive Effects of
Disfluent Typography
on Functional Reading
Myra Thiessen
a
, Sofie Beier
b
and
Hannah Keage
c
a
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia;
b
The
Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts,
Copenhagen, Denmark;
c
University of South
Australia, Adelaide, Australia
ABSTRACT Recent debate has seen the proposition
that difficult to read, or disfluent, typefaces can
improve certain learning conditions. This is
counterintuitive for typography where it is the aim to
support reading acts by creating texts that are as
clear and as easy to read as possible. We explore
recent literature on the disfluency effect in an effort
to contextualize the results for typography research
that is grounded in functional readability. What is
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The Design Journal DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2020.1810434797
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evident is that the discussion about whether or not disfluent
reading materials support learning is far from resolved.
Further research is needed in key areas such as those
related to the typographic principles of visual cuing and
emphasis as well as other broader areas such as how we
may be able to determine threshold for disfluency, benefit
over time, and what impact environmental distractions have
on the disfluency effect.
KEYWORDS: Typography, functional readability, psychology, cogni-
tion, disfluency
Introduction
+
Recently, a small group of typographic and legibility
researchers have begun to call for more collaboration in an
effort to generate knowledge that is useful and practical
(Beier 2016; Dyson 2013; Thiessen et al. 2015). This is likely due to
the recognition that although investigations into many aspects of
reading, reading processes, and cognition have been documented
over many decades, some basic questions about how findings relate
to typographic design for reading remain unanswered. This may be
because much of the knowledge generated about reading has been
undertaken by psychologists and vision scientists whose research
questions tend to be framed around understanding cognition and
behaviour broadly; whereas, typographers tend to be more con-
cerned with the reading materials and how these might be designed
to better support reading and learning behaviours. Although under-
standing how readers behave and interact with texts is essential to
supporting reading tasks, the knowledge generated by studies that
are strictly focused on reading processes is not always easy to trans-
late into typographic outputs.
To discuss this issue, this paper evaluates the disfluency effect,
which purports that increasing the perceptual difficulty of reading
materials can have a positive effect on a reader’s memory. This effect
has seen recent debate; however, the academic community is no
closer to consensus on how and to what extent disfluency affects
cognitive functions such as memory. We postulate that through
multidisciplinary collaborations involving psychology and typography,
experimental research that draws on both cognitive neuroscience
and psychological methodologies data can be generated that is
more accurately reflects readers and reading materials.
Functional readability
Guided by tradition, typographers tend to rely on experiential and
craft knowledge. This is a rich tradition that is informed by genera-
tions of accumulated knowledge of technique and technology and by
observing different typographic styles and readers. These tend to
M. Thiessen et al.
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follow cultural preferences and reading requirements over time, along
with the aesthetics of the typographer. However, with technological
advancements and data collection tools like electroencephalography
(EEG), functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI), and eye-tracking
equipment we have the capacity to understand reading processes in a
more detailed way.
It is important to recognize, however, that within an applied prac-
tice like typography scientific paradigms cannot provide a complete
picture about ideal reading scenarios. This is because they can only
speak to a narrow set of defined and controlled criteria at any one
time since the isolation of variables is essential to experimental meth-
odologies within science. We see scientifically based investigations
as essential to understanding typographic practice, but their usage
depends on the nature of the investigation; the criteria tested may
not consider aspects of reading in contexts –and texts must perform
in a broad range of real-life reading scenarios. In order to test and
gather data on reading behaviour and material, artificial reading scen-
arios must be created, most typically in laboratories or other con-
trolled environments. Regardless of whether or not the materials are
realistic, the environment or the task necessary for systematic scien-
tific study will impact the reading action. This means that to create a
successful text for the intended action, the typographic practice will
combine the science (generated under controlled conditions), the
craft, and the reading scenario. We call this evaluation of reading in
context functional readability.
Our definition builds on a popular understanding of readability,
which focuses primarily on craft, and states, ‘if the columns of a
newspaper or magazine or the pages of a book can be read for
many minutes at a time without strain or difficulty, then we can say
the type has good readability’(Tracy 1986, 31). However, what is
missing from Walter Tracy’s definition is clear integration of the
knowledge developed about readers and reading behaviour in
response to typographic materials and the context or environment in
which they are expected to complete the reading action. For func-
tional readability the performance of a text is examined with Tracy’s
understanding for ease –including how typographic variables such
as typeface, size, space (horizontal and vertical), and layout interact
–but is expanded to incorporate how external environmental factors
and differences across individual readers and their expectations and
goals, might impact the reading action. It considers how emphasis,
grouping or visual cueing is interpreted (Dyson and Beier 2016) but
might also include less traditional typographic applications such as
those that signal to readers appropriate vocal expression when read-
ing out loud (Bessemans et al. 2019) or how easily additions like
hyperlinks used to enhance text meaning through hidden layering are
understood. In short, functional readability evaluates text typography
and speaks to how well that text supports comprehension and how
appropriate it is for the specific task, context, environment, and
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reader. Questions that evaluate functional readability might include: Is
the typography to be read at night? Will it be back lit? Is the reader
nervous because he or she is visiting a hospital? Do they have a
reading difficulty?
The disfluency
1
effect
Central to functional readability are the needs of the reader and how
they might respond in the light of varying tasks, typographic genre,
and individual preference. In the psychological literature, the spec-
trum of fluency in the context of written information (from fluent to
disfluent) refers to ‘the subjective experience of ease or difficulty with
which we are able to process information’(Oppenheimer 2008, 237).
It is the cognitive effort needed to complete a reading task measured
by speed and accuracy and includes judgements about perceived
effort by the reader. This is closely linked to functional readability
because a reader’s impression of texts based on how it looks
2
can
influence how difficult or convoluted the content appears, how time
consuming it is understood to be, or whether it is trustworthy (Song
and Schwarz 2008b,2010).
The disfluency effect, as observed by Oppenheimer (2008), may
impact a range of cognitive processes, including encoding, concep-
tual understanding and reasoning, spatial attention and processing,
and, central to typographic presentations, perceptual fluency.
Perceptual fluency is affected by visual aspects of the typography
(Dunlosky and Mueller 2016) including features related to how clear
and easy to recognize letters and words that comprise a text are.
This includes features such as the presentation surface (e.g. screen
or print; high or low resolution), the visual complexity of the typeface,
or issues related to type size, contrast, and space, such as crowd-
ing. These issues may be better understood within typographic litera-
ture as describing texts or typefaces that are more or less readable
and legible.
Texts that are seen to be challenging in relation to perceived cog-
nitive effort can hence be considered as disfluent. However, these
harder to read texts are not always seen to be undesirable in cogni-
tive psychology. Since they elicit more attention, disfluent typefaces
can be associated with conditions of desired difficulty (Bjork and
Bjork 2011) that act to slow down reading speed and in this way,
increase the likelihood that individuals will recognize errors in text
and content (Song and Schwarz 2008a) or contribute to an increase
in retention for facts (Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, and Vaughan
2011; French et al. 2013; Sungkhasettee, Friedman, and Castel
2011). This rationale is counterintuitive to typography, where the aim
is typically to facilitate conditions that support reading with min-
imal effort.
M. Thiessen et al.
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The ‘how’and the ‘what’
By its nature, typography practice and research must draw know-
ledge and theory from a range of disciplinary domains. This agility in
practice is a strength and provides a broad understanding of several
interacting fields of knowledge. It is an approach that is grounded in
collaborations across typography and psychology that aim to pro-
duce the most applicable and productive knowledge in legibility
research. However, we see two problems central to the discussion:
(1) psychological scientists do not tend to generate knowledge that
has a clear application to typographic practice primarily because
they are more interested in reading behaviour and individual differen-
ces rather than the material used to read from; and (2) typographers
lack the vocabulary to interpret results generated through psycho-
logical experiments into relevant typography application. So, while
both psychological scientists and typographers are interested in
reading and legibility, they tend to prioritize different aspects of the
behaviour. As Dyson (2013) explores, psychologists tend to place
more focus on improving our understanding of how the brain and the
perceptual system processes and understands information; whereas,
typographers are more focused on the what and are primarily inter-
ested in ways reading material can be designed to improve the read-
ing experience, the accessibility of the information, and overall
impression of the text. Thus, we attempt to expand on Dyson’s effort
to reconcile psychologists’and designers’approaches where pos-
sible or identify differences that may enrich our understanding of
‘how we read and how we may design letters to facilitate reading’
(Dyson 2013, 282).
Although how we read and what we read are difficult to separate
in practice, collaborative research teams have been historically rare.
In the sixties and seventies, a team led by Herbert Spencer included
researchers with background in academic research and researchers
who were practising designers (Spencer 1968; Spencer, Reynolds,
and Coe 1973). More recently, the value of unique multidisciplinary
teams can be seen directly in practice with the work of Microsoft’s
Advanced Reading Technologies and their collaboration with type
designers, first with the ClearType project (Berry 2004; Larson et al.
2007; Larson et al. 2007) and again with the development of the
typeface family Sitka (Larson and Carter 2016). Another contempor-
ary example is the Centre for Visibility Design at The Royal Danish
Academy of Fine Arts, which includes researchers with backgrounds
in graphic design and in psychology (Beier and Oderkerk 2019a,
2019b). Within the research community, several newer experiments
employing a paradigm of classic psychophysics
3
are results of col-
laborations between type designers and vision scientists (Beier,
Bernard, and Castet 2018; Beier and Dyson, 2013; Dobres, Reimer,
and Chahine 2016; Sawyer et al. 2017; Xiong et al. 2018), and
typographers and neuroscientists (Keage et al. 2014; Thiessen et al.
2015). These novel multidisciplinary methodological approaches are
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showing that choice of typeface has cognitive and perceptual impli-
cations that can impact on behaviours and abilities to sustain reading
activities over time.
The differences observed in motivation, priority, and vocabulary
may be what makes finding common ground across psychology and
typography more difficult, and thus, why collaboration is rare.
However, the fact that typography, a traditionally craft-oriented field,
can use experimental methods to identify yes or no answers to ques-
tions regarding comprehension or reading ease, is, in our view, a gift
to the design community. It is nonetheless important to remember
that within the context of typographic practice, knowledge is incon-
sequential if it cannot be translated into a typographic output. Our
aim is to expand this discussion and advocate for greater consider-
ation and integration of cognitive neuroscience and psychological
research as a means to inform a typographic practice that prioritizes
functional readability.
Making sense of the disfluency effect
The literature has seen debate about the value of the disfluency
effect with two studies published in Diemand-Yauman,
Oppenheimer, and Vaughan (2011) occupying a central role. In the
paper, findings are presented that suggest increasing the visual com-
plexity of learning materials by using difficult to read typefaces
improves retention and recall in memorisation tasks. In their first
experiment Diemand-Yauman et al. demonstrated the disfluency
effect for a short-term task taking place over a few hours and in a
lab setting. Participants were asked to learn about three different fic-
tional creatures. They were expected to memorize seven characteris-
tics for each creature for a total of 21 characteristics. The disfluent
conditions, examples shown in Figure 1, were Comic Sans Italic and
Bodoni Italic both in a 60% tint of black at 12-point. For the fluent
condition, Arial Regular at 16-point printed in full black was used.
The first study was followed up by testing the hypothesis under
more realistic learning conditions: in high school classrooms with
school aged participants over a period that ranged between one and
a half weeks for some groups and up to four weeks for others.
Teachers were asked to deliver their usual content but for the disflu-
ent condition used materials that were presented in difficult to read
typefaces, consisting of either Haettenschweiler, Monotype Corsiva,
or Comic Sans Italic (Figure 1), or materials that were visually manip-
ulated through intentionally distorting the type by moving the paper
during photocopying. For the control condition, teachers used their
normal materials with no visual manipulations. At the end of individual
curricular modules, the participants who were exposed to the
disfluent conditions performed better when tested compared to the
control (fluent) condition. These results may seem relatively straight-
forward, and they are presented as influential on learning, but they
are not a complete picture of the disfluency effect and do not
M. Thiessen et al.
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account for several interacting factors related to cognitive effort and
processing, which may also play a role. In short, they only tell half
the story.
Measuring brain activity using EEG demonstrates that the visual
complexity of a typeface effects the cognitive effort required to iden-
tify individual letters (Keage et al. 2014), aligning with cognitive
research, which shows that texts set in typefaces that are visually
complex are harder to identify by readers than ones that are simpler
(Beier, Sand, and Starrfelt 2017; Pelli et al. 2006). This increased
attention and cognitive effort is seen at both low-level visual process-
ing (up to 200 milliseconds post-stimulus) and higher-level recogni-
tion processing (220–300 milliseconds), suggesting that disfluent
typefaces require more processing resources for letter identification
and comprehension (Keage et al. 2014). This finding may account for
the improved memory related performance seen in some studies
exploring the disfluency effect (Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, and
Vaughan 2011; French et al. 2013; Sungkhasettee, Friedman, and
Castel 2011). However, further analysis of Keage et al.’s finding
shows that differences exist in the processing of disfluent (compared
to fluent) typefaces beyond extraction of low-level features and rec-
ognition of the letter has occurred; that is to say, readers must con-
tinue to exert increased cognitive effort to integrate and maintain
disfluent stimuli in the working memory (after 350 milliseconds post-
stimulus) in comparison to easier to read variations.
Such phenomenon is a concern for typographers who aim to sup-
port reading by reducing the cognitive burden on attention and work-
ing memory processes (Unger 2007). Working memory (Baddeley
1992,2002) describes some of the cognitive processes that underly
Figure 1.
Examples of the typeface conditions tested in Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer,
and Vaughan (2011).
We have attempted to replicate the typeface conditions as they are shown in
Diemand-Yauman et al.; however, there is some discrepancy in how the materials
are described and it is not entirely clear when italicized Roman versions of Comic
Sans and Bodoni are used or whether they were true italics.
When comparing letters across font it is more appropriate to standardize size by
equating x-height rather than pointsize.
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functional language operations such as attention, visual, and speech-
based processing. These processes are central to reading compre-
hension, but fragile and limited in capacity. In this light, most legibility
research projects are driven by the assumption that comprehension
and other higher order tasks can be supported by reducing the cog-
nitive load necessary to complete simple low-level tasks, like letter
and word identification. However, the disfluency effect suggests the
opposite and claims that disfluency creates a level of desired diffi-
culty, that by attracting more attention, acts to promote deeper proc-
essing and thus supports learning (Bjork and Bjork 2011).
Experimental strategies that remove letters or words to render disflu-
ency, or that invert words (Sungkhasettee, Friedman, and Castel
2011) utilize cognitive domains such as spatial processing, concept
formation and reasoning –not usually relied on heavily during expert
reading –which appears to facilitate learning. However, this is not
necessarily the same as manipulating visual complexity by using diffi-
cult to read typefaces, which likely increases attentional load. A diffi-
culty is that in experimental studies disfluency is operationalized
through a range of different typographic manipulations, including var-
iations to content or visual/stylistic changes, but these differences
are not always made clear.
Although Diemand-Yauman et al. recognized that competing
issues such as the novelty (referred to as distinctiveness) of the learn-
ing material, individual participant differences followed by the
between-subject study design, or how the content was delivered by
the teacher may have contributed to better performance, it was
nonetheless suggested by the authors that difficult to read typefaces
are an easy and cost-effective way to improve students learning
results. This statement is counterintuitive for typographers, and for
functional readability, and might also be irresponsible before these
data had been tested for reliability. Indeed, more recent studies have
proven the results reported in Diemand-Yauman et al. difficult to rep-
licate (Dunlosky and Mueller 2016; Taylor et al. 2020) suggesting
their importance may have been both inflated and premature.
Further, and suggesting there are still gaps, a meta-analysis of
disfluency studies revealed no effect of perceptual disfluency on
recall, but did show that the use of difficult to read typefaces does
impact an individual’s judgements of the time and effort needed to
adequately memorize content (Xie, Zhou, and Liu 2018), as well as
increasing the actual time needed to learn information (Eitel and K€
uhl
2016; Sanchez and Jaeger 2015). One exception to this trend, and
with a thorough methodology, is the work by Geller et al. (2018),
who found an effect on memory in favour of handwritten scripts
compared to the font Courier
4
. One very interesting point this study
raises is that it suggests there may be a threshold at which point
novelty or visual complexity ceases to be beneficial to memory. In
Geller et al.’s experiment, readers tended to remember words better
when they were presented in an easy compared to hard to read
M. Thiessen et al.
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handwritten variation (Geller et al. 2018) suggesting the possibility of
a perceptual disfluent effect that is strongest using only mildly difficult
to read typefaces.
Considerations for typographic application
More difficult to read texts tend to impact efficiency by increasing
cognitive load at both discriminative and sustained processing
(Keage et al. 2014; Thiessen et al. 2015) and increasing reading time
(Sanchez and Jaeger 2015), suggesting they take more effort to
decipher. This means it is likely that fewer cognitive resources are
available for readers to perform any number of parallel and higher
order tasks, making it difficult to see how increasing the visual com-
plexity of a text could lead to desirable reading conditions.
Typographers are very interested in typography that is designed
for likeability and clarity of content because such focus is closely
connected to the motivational aspects related to reading actions
(Unger 2018). For this, some of the most relevant topics that have
been investigated by the research community are: changes of type-
face (Garvey, Eie, and Klenna 2016;Pu

snik, Podlesek, and Mo
zina
2016), size of type (Legge and Bigelow 2011), and variations to
spacing conditions (Perea et al. 2012). It has also been shown that
the visual aspects of a text, such as those related to genre, provide
information about the kind of content it contains and thus dictate
reader expectation and response (Gonzales Crisp 2012; Moys 2013,
2014; Schriver 1997). Further to this, typographers must also con-
sider the reading environment, with all the inevitable distractions, as
well as understanding what the reader aims to achieve by completing
the reading task. Although not typically part of studies of disfluency,
we think these above-mentioned factors related to functionable read-
ability contribute to a reader’s impression of ease and are, therefore,
relevant to discussions of disfluency.
Motivation and preference
Importantly, impressions of difficulty like those associated with disflu-
ency are very likely to impact one’s motivation to engage with a task
(Oppenheimer 2008) and this preference for typography likely devel-
ops early in the literacy development process (Walker and Reynolds
2003). Since a reader’s motivation plays a large role in whether they
will engage with the text and for how long, typographers typically
take a position that involves making the reading task look as easy as
possible. In an examination of the visual impact of high-quality and
poor-quality typography, Larson et al. (2007) explore the importance
of aesthetics on reading performance. They assert the way that a
text looks, and whether it is visually appealing, can impact on how
well it works for a reader, or a specific demographic of readers.
Aesthetics perform an important role by capturing a reader’s atten-
tion and providing cues as to difficulty or genre. Although Larson
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et al. did not find any differences in reading performance based on
typographic variation, they did determine that participants performed
better when in a better mood. This was measured indirectly by
observing a reduction in frowning when participants were reading
test variations that were more legible, which may indicate less
frustration.
An individual’s opinion of whether or not they will remember
something later, is called judgment of learning (JOL). This is based
on several factors, among these the impression of perceptual
information such as the typographic setting (Luna, Nogueira, and
Albuquerque 2018). If we follow the reasoning of most typographers,
and the above-mentioned findings on the positive effect of high-quality
typography, one would expect a positive influence on JOL in cases
where the text stimulus is highly readable. This is also the case. In a
series of studies, Yue, Castel, and Bjork (2013) explore and try to repli-
cate results that support desired difficulty for learning. They showed
participants a series of words one at a time in groups of 26 words.
The word groups were either clear or blurry. For each list participants
were asked to rate how confident they felt they were on remembering
each word if asked later in the experiment. Yue et al. found that mem-
ory for clear words was higher than for blurry words and that this cor-
responded to the JOLs indicated by each participant. This trend was
apparent over short (2 second) as well as or long (5 second) exposure
times; however, memory for the blurry words improved with a longer
exposure time. Yue et al. suggest that visually distorting words does
not create a desired difficulty, later confirmed by Magreehan et al.
(2016). Rather, readers are just likely to need more time to complete
reading tasks and learn equivalent content when disfluent compared
to fluent material is used (Eitel and K€
uhl 2016; Xie, Zhou, and
Liu 2018).
Sanchez and Jaeger (2015) confirm this result demonstrating fix-
ation time is on average longer when participants are reading from
texts that use typefaces that are more difficult to read, suggesting
that the overall slower reading time is a result of the need for longer
fixations. The matter is, however, not completely clear. Strukelj et al.
(2016) show different results with eye tracking as they found no dis-
fluency effect for learning outcomes, reading time, fixation time, or
time spent reading. The studies do differ in how visual complexity
was defined with Sanchez and Jaeger varying typeface across
Courier (fluent condition) and Mistral (disfluent condition); whereas,
Strukelj et al. manipulated a single typeface, Arial, by using a filtering
technique that created a blurring effect, interpreted in Figure 2. This
further suggests that there is likely a threshold at which visual com-
plexity impacts reading behaviour and points to a need for
more research.
The literature supports the often-voiced hypothesis among prac-
tising designers that typefaces can have an inherent connotation.
Applying the attribute scaling methodology of semantic differential,
M. Thiessen et al.
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developed by Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum (1957), it has been
demonstrated that when asking participants to rate a typeface’s
semantic association, participants agree on assigning the same
adjectives to typeface styles (Brumberger 2003; Juni and Gross
2008; Tantillo, Lorenzo-Aiss, and Mathisen 1995; Walker, Smith, and
Livingston 1986), and associate certain typeface styles with certain
products (Doyle and Bottomley 2004). Lewis and Walker (1989) have
manage to show similar results by employing a paradigm based on
performance, and demonstrated that participants react to the rela-
tionship between the meaning of the word and a perceived meaning
or character of a typeface in a similar fashion to the Stroop effect
5
(Stroop 1935). After a preliminary study, where participants were
asked to rate a range of typefaces on a series of seven point scales
with opposite adjectives at the extremes, Lewis and Walker found
that when typing the adjective pairs of strong/weak, bright/dull, fast/
slow, light/heavy in either the typeface Cooper Black or Palatino
Italic, and when the adjective was consistent with what the typeface
had been judged as in the preliminary study, the response time was
faster than when it was inconsistent. Readers are also more likely to
group description words or see them as members of the same cat-
egory when they appear in the same typeface (Oppenheimer and
Frank 2008). This suggestion that readers categorizes concepts
based on their visual appearance points to the value of visual cueing.
Typographers regularly draw on visual cueing techniques, such as
grouping, hierarchy, and emphasis created through visual relation-
ships that are determined by typeface, colour, or placement. What
Oppenheimer and Frank (2008) show is that these actions improve
fluency and related cognition, suggesting that how visual relation-
ships are interpreted and understood impacts learning as well as
motivational aspects related to reading.
Finally, an interesting exploration for typographic application are
studies that looked at distinctiveness (Rummer, Schweppe, and
Schwede 2016). Distinctiveness can be described as how different
or unique a font is and also how different typefaces are from each
other when multiple typefaces are used within a single text.
Distinctiveness is important for typographic practice in several ways.
Typeface designers develop alphabets that share visual
Figure 2.
Examples of typeface variations tested using eye tracking. Sanchez and Jaeger
(2015) tested fluency across typeface while Strukelj et al. (2016) manipulated a sin-
gle typeface with blurring, interpreted here.
A Review of the Cognitive Effects of Disfluent Typography on Functional Reading
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characteristics so the letters sit together in harmony, but that are
also different in important ways so each letter can be easily identified
(Beier 2012). When mixing typefaces typographers tend to choose
families that have distinctive differences so to create enough contrast
that the change can be easily seen by the reader (Beier 2012;
Gonzales Crisp 2012). Changing typeface is a way to signal the
reader to the importance of a word or phrase, determine a hierarchy
and structure, and to group related information. Rummer,
Schweppe, and Schwede (2016) explored distinctiveness in relation
to disfluency since unusual typefaces are known to attract attention,
and although they found no effect of distinctiveness, questions
remain about whether or not typeface distinctiveness can be useful
in typographic application. For example, Rummer et al. did not mix
typeface stimuli within a single reading condition, which eliminates
the opportunity for direct visual comparison. They also speculate that
other moderators could contribute to the strength of an effect of dis-
tinctiveness such as learner, material, or task characteristics.
Explored in this way, distinctiveness aligns closely with the typo-
graphic principle of emphasis and since questions remain about
whether learners benefit from its use, we suggest further study
is warranted.
Conclusion
Contextual and cultural consideration in reading research is important
to inform best practice for functional readability. Conversely, in order
to examine, for example, the brain’s response to specific stimuli, dis-
tractions must be limited and experiments undertaken in laboratory
settings. Consequently, our ability to collect data of external validity
may be limited by the necessary use of contrived reading scenarios
in lab environments. Nonetheless we propose that this is a necessary
and important piece of the puzzle that to now has been missing.
Used alongside other data collection methods as well as more quali-
tative analyses that explore preference or individual reader scenarios,
a more informed set of principles can be developed. Interdisciplinary
collaborations are necessary to produce findings related to a wider
range of reading material and requirements, as well as readers, and
also likely to improve our knowledge about text and typeface design
in a more robust way.
Although it is not clear whether or not disfluent conditions related
to visual complexity support learning and memory tasks over the
long-term, what the current debate has highlighted is how things can
go wrong. It is counter intuitive to typography to suggest that teach-
ers use difficult to read typefaces as a cost-effective way to improve
learning results (as it was suggested by Diemand-Yauman,
Oppenheimer, and Vaughan 2011). Further still, it is perhaps irre-
sponsible to make this suggestion before the academic community
has had adequate opportunity to test the robustness of the claim.
We see value in continuing to explore disfluency since questions
M. Thiessen et al.
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related to emphasis (distinctiveness) and visual groupings, threshold
for visual complexity of typefaces, extended reading conditions and
learning effects over time, and the effect of reading or learning envi-
ronments remain unanswered. However, we suggest that the best
way to further knowledge of reading processes and materials are
through collaborative research efforts that involve both psychology
and typography. For example, most of the experiments into typeface
disfluency have compared typefaces of different families and styles.
This approach makes sense when the aim is to investigate the ultim-
ate effect of disfluency, yet it is not effective when investigating the
effect of more subtle differences across typefaces such as those a
typographic practitioner may draw on to create hierarchies or
emphasis. Finally, in most of the cases reported in this paper, issues
of typographical fluency relate to scenarios involving the reading of
text at an average reading distance of about 40–50 cm. For normal
vision adult readers this also means that perceptual difficulties in
identifying the letters and words are a minor problem. However, out
in the environment, reading can be affected by a range of situational
and physical deficits, which can result in great challenges in the per-
ception of the type. Creating new more controlled investigations that
focus on intermediate levels of disfluency as stimuli, could contribute
with more nuanced answers to the disfluency debate.
NOTES
1. We use the term disfluency/fluency to align with psychology
literature and because we discuss issues related to visual aspects
of typography but also a reader’s impression of a text based on
those visual aspects.
2. Typographic genre is related to how texts are categorized by
readers base on broad visual features, e.g. newspaper compared
to novel. Readers develop expectations that can influence their
reading strategy based on how a text looks (Moys, 2013,2014).
3. Psychophysics describes a branch of psychology that explores
the relationship between physical objects or stimuli and
mental phenomena.
4. The monospaced nature of Courier may affect its readability, and
thus, the results reported in the Geller et al. study. A collaborative
approach that includes typography researchers is likely to bring to
light such concerns.
5. The phenomenon known as the Stroop effect was first reported by
John Ridley Stroop in 1935. It shows that it is easier to name the
ink-colour of a word such as ‘red’, if the colour is red compared to
any other colour.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
A Review of the Cognitive Effects of Disfluent Typography on Functional Reading
The Design Journal809

Funding
This work of the second author was supported by the Danish
Council for Independent Research [grant number DFF –
7013-00039].
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Biographies
Dr Myra Thiessen is a Lecturer in Communication Design at Monash
University. Her research interests include the impact of motivation,
context, and environment on reading and learning.
Prof WSR Sofie Beier is Head of the Centre for Visibility Design at
the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Her research is concerned
with improving the reading experience by better understanding the
impact of typefaces and letter shapes.
Assoc. Prof Hannah Keage leads the Cognitive Ageing and
Impairment Neurosciences (CAIN) laboratory at the University of
South Australia. Her research investigates cognitive development
and ageing using psychophysiological measures.
ORCID
Myra Thiessen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2887-2129
Sofie Beier http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5699-2884
Hannah Keage http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6814-4997
Address for correspondence
Myra Thiessen.
Email: myra.thiessen@monash.edu
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