Processing Inverted English Script I was sitting in a restaurant when I realized that it was relatively easy to read this list of a few locations in inverted English script. It made me curious about how it is possible to read this with such ease. It also seems that since these names may be familiar, I might just be engaging in "inverted image" recognition since the normal 'whole image' (e.g. Boston) seems so familiar. Perhaps if these locations were not familiar, it would be slightly harder to process the text.

I was conflicted between posting this in this or in the Linguistics StackExchange but felt that this would be more relevant since there will be multiple perspectives from those interested in neuroscience, psycholinguistics, machine learning and natural-language processing.

A search on the internet seemed to give a lot of instances of the freak-phenomenon of 'mirror writing' and the well-known phenomenon of irrelevance of spelling in comprehension. Furthermore, it is important to notice that this is different from writing of those who are diagnosed with Dyslexia who process language differently (the writing is whole-wise flipped as opposed to individually). However, there seemed to be a dearth of information on this topic in particular. Of course, I am not interested in one-word instances, another example would be like this. 



My questions are :-

Are there any good experiments on the phenomenon of processing inverted text ?

Although very little is understood about the neuroscience of language, are there any neurolinguistic perspectives on this phenomenon?

What are the underlying mechanisms hypothesized by the quoted papers in processing such text?

Does there seem to be any evidence of rule-based processing 
(e.g. flipping each letter individually)
Are there any good experiments on the phenomenon of processing inverted text?


This is probably the place to start:

Poldrack, Russell A., et al. "The neural basis of visual skill learning: an fMRI study of mirror reading." Cerebral Cortex 8.1 (1998): 1-10.
APA 


  What are the underlying mechanisms hypothesized by the quoted papers in processing such text?


"Multiple regions in the occipital
lobe, inferior temporal cortex, superior parietal cortex and
cerebellum were involved in the reading of mirror-reversed
compared to normally oriented text. For novel stimuli, skilled
mirror-reading was associated with decreased activation in the right
superior parietal cortex and posterior occipital regions and
increased activation in the left inferior temporal lobe. These results
suggest that learning to read mirror-reversed text involves a
progression from visuospatial transformation to direct recognition of
transformed letters. Reading practiced, relative to unpracticed,
stimuli was associated with decreased activation in occipital visual
cortices, inferior temporal cortex and superior parietal cortex and
increased activation in occipito-parietal and lateral temporal
regions. By examining skill learning and item-specific repetition
priming in the same task, this study demonstrates that both of these
forms of learning exhibit shifts in the set of neural structures that
contribute to performance."


  Does there seem to be any evidence of rule-based processing?


Yes:

"Mirror-reading skill is letter-specific rather than being a
general visual transformation skill"