How does reading internet and texting abbreviations affect processing?

Abstract

The use of shortcuts and abbreviations in everyday communications, both online and through texts, has become increasingly popular over the past decade. Shortcuts like ’lol’ for ’laugh out loud’ aim to provide emotional nuance and context that would otherwise be lost in standard written communication. However, studies have shown that there is a processing cost associated with using these shortcuts (Perea, Acha, & Carreiras, 2009; Ganushchak, Krott, Frisson, & Meyer, 2013). Other studies have found that texting shortcuts are lexically independent units: they are represented and stored in the brain independently of their full, standard form (Ganushchak, Krott, & Meyer, 2010; 2012; Tat & Azuma, 2015). The current study examines the effect of newer, more diverse shortcuts on processing and Working Memory (WM) capacity through two experiments. It was hypothesised that reading shortcuts would lead to an increased processing cost and poorer recall. Furthermore, it was hypothesised that this processing cost and poorer recall would depend on the type of shortcut. Phrasal shortcuts (e.g. ’brb’ for ’be right back’) would be more difficult to read and would lead to poorer recall compared to contractions and clippings (e.g. ‘txt’ for ‘text’). In Experiment 1, the processing cost of reading shortcuts was explored through a self-paced reading task, with results supporting our hypotheses. In Experiment 2, participants read sentences which contained memory words to be remembered for recall at the end of a trial, with the number of correct items recalled used as a gauge of working memory capacity and processing efficiency (Service & Maury, 2014; Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). Results were mixed, with no clear effect of the presence of a shortcut or shortcut type modulating recall. Implications of these results are discussed with regard to reading and the direction of language evolution.