OT: comprehension

beoram

beoram

Joined
Nov 27, 2001
Messages
1,780
an interesting thing I saw on another forum:

Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it
deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod
are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is that the frist and
lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a
toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a
porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter
by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Click to expand...


I strongly suspect this is only true for native English speakers though. Even for fluent second-language speakers of English this is probably very difficult.
 
during the 50-60-70's and read the Chicago Daily News have a certain added proficiency. Apparently the paper did not believe in proof-reading, and it was a matter of pride to be able to jump sentences and paragraphs to continue the article, then jump back for continuity. This, and the "Morning Commute Fold", i.e.: taking a full-sized newpaper and folding it in such a way as to be able to read it, one-handed and standing up, holding on to a support rail.

We are also good at "Jumble" puzzles.

Interesting post, Beo.
 
BEO,

Very interesting. I zip right through your quoted paragraph, without even noticing most of the mistakes until I had the message. Then I looked at it again and noticed that all of it was messed up.

n2s
 
I thought this was quite interesting myself - goes to show how good we are at understanding language even when it is obscured in various ways.

At my old University, there was an experimental study along these lines, in which one of the subjects turned out to be seriously dyslexic (though I don't recall what the particular name of her type of dyslexia is) - this was revealed through various experiments.

But she herself had had no idea that she was dyslexic, as the language part of her brain had apparently become very adept at resolving strings of letters as words of English even if the visual centre of her brain tended to sporadically reverse and re-order letters (or whatever she was seeing).

It was very strange to watch a video of this experiment, as one could see her becoming very upset as she realised she was having problems with some of the tests - and had had no previous idea that she had any sort of dyslexia. And, in practice, she had no problems reading or writing.

When she graduated she went on to work as a legal aid or in some sort of position requiring interpretation of written legal code. And I imagine that being able to resolve strings of gibberish into some sort of meaning is a very useful ability to have in this field. ;)
 
Cool. :cool:

Similarly,

I saw a demonstration that only the top half of a word

is needed to read it.

Now,

the question is,

can we read it if we see only the top half

of each of the words in the sample you shared?
 
Originally posted by ddean
Cool. :cool:

Similarly,
I saw a demonstration that only the top half of a word
is needed to read it.
Now,
the question is,
can we read it if we see only the top half
of each of the words in the sample you shared?
Click to expand...

english-half-scram01.jpg


??

maybe? I already know what it says, so it's hard for me to tell. but it seems to me I can still read this pretty well, though it is slower than the scrambled letters alone (and scrambled letters still are a bit slower than unscrambled too, not surprisingly). I think with scrambled and top half missing, we end up figuring out what sorts of words would make sense in the context, more so than we do in normal circumstances, or even as much as we do with the scrambling of letters alone...
 
Thanks, neat!

I can still read 80% of it fairly naturally.

In proper letter order I'm sure the brain is
recognizing the distinct contour of each word,
like a profile of a face, city, or other.

Here, first each letter must be inferred,
then the jumbled word recognized.

Wow.

Amazing how well the brain can fill in gaps in information.
 
Beoram.
I`m Norwegian, but the text was fairly easy to read. I don`t think one even has to be fluent second-language speaking to easily read this text. Almost everybody see/read the text in the same way as described in the text.
 
Wotan,

Hmm... Perhaps you are right. I was basing my idea on the fact that I think I would have trouble reading German or French or Hindi with letters scrambled.

Dean -

Yes, there seem to be all sorts of ways 'the brain' fills in gaps (literal or otherwise). The thing with cutting off the bottoms of letters is a variant on being able to read words on a worn bill-board sign (with some bits of various letters missing).

Even more amazing, if one thinks about it, is our ability to understand what people say to us -- I mean, every person's vocal tract is somewhat different, and thus their voices are different, some people pronounce words differently from ourselves, we often listen to and understand people despite large amounts of background noise and other inteference. A special case of this is the 'cocktail party problem', that is, how do we listen and converse with another person in a situation where part of the background noise consists of other people talking? How do we filter out the specific person we want to listen to.

Anyway, interesting stuff.

--Ben
 
Wow , Beo thats brilliant, it realy shows th adaptability of the human brain, I read it as normal even with the bottom half of the letters missing! Have to admit my spellings terrible anyway though!

Spiral
 
there was an experiment of this nature donw with images, where certain amouunts of color and other inf was reduced, and the brain will fill inn the gaps. That's why you can take a lo-resolution pic and still 'see' what the image is, even if it is grainy or partially obscured.

I actually read the half letters segment faster than the first one.

Ktieh
 
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