How the Mind/Brain works!

[mendelman]

From Cake's (the band) website:
"Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer waht
oredr the ltteers in a wrod are in; the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the
frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses
and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid
deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe."

Very interesting - how the mind/brain works!

It's amazing what a collection of nerves and electrical pulses can do.

 

[Maister]

A good observation....it underscores an idea long understood by speed readers. The fastest readers not only take in entire words at an instant but can take in entire lines of text. It's a learned skill which most people are capable of acquiring. Combinations of words tend to occur/recur in fairly consistent patterns which an acclimated mind can pick up on instantly.
A study was once done, where they tracked the eye movements of master chess players to see where on the board they were looking (to gain some insight into how they were visually 'thinking') and then compared the results to beginner/intermediate chess players. What they found surprised the researchers at first. The masters spent very little time looking around the board and only looked in a few places, even though they were planning several moves in advance. The novices' eyes moved quite a bit more and were all over the board. It turns out though, that the experienced players intuitively understand that the game (especially at the beginning) tends to follow recognizable patterns. They didn't bother to look at rooks because they knew the rooks would sit there until mid game.
The human mind has amazing ability to detect patterns in all sorts of ways auditorily, visually, and intellectually. I tend to think the money spent on researching and trying to understand the way we think is money well spent in the long run.

 

[DecaturHawk]

However, if you didn't already know how the word is supposed to look, you wouldn't be able to read that statement. You can read "wrod" as "word" because you already know how "word" is supposed to be spelled and you can properly infer from the order of the letters that "word" is what the writer meant. But if you didn't already know this, then you could not have properly interpreted what was meant. So, the order of letters is important.

 

[Michele Zone]

However, if you didn't already know how the word is supposed to look, you wouldn't be able to read that statement. You can read "wrod" as "word" because you already know how "word" is supposed to be spelled and you can properly infer from the order of the letters that "word" is what the writer meant. But if you didn't already know this, then you could not have properly interpreted what was meant. So, the order of letters is important.

It also makes a difference if you have a brain that process information in a certain way. I have seen that before and I can read it but it is torture. My older son has real issues with not recognizing words if they are misspelled.

 

[Maister]

However, if you didn't already know how the word is supposed to look, you wouldn't be able to read that statement. You can read "wrod" as "word" because you already know how "word" is supposed to be spelled and you can properly infer from the order of the letters that "word" is what the writer meant. But if you didn't already know this, then you could not have properly interpreted what was meant. So, the order of letters is important.

The order of letters is important at first but becomes less so as time goes on (for those of us with 'regular' wiring). To use an analogy, remember being nervous while learning to drive a car? You had to use cognitive functions to 'think' about and register actions during the whole order of operations (OK approaching a turn...put on turn signal...apply pressure to brake...whoah, too much pressure there on the brake better slack off......come to a complete stop behind the white line by the stop sign....). It was a cumbersome process because a different part of the brain was used to perform the task than the one that does it now - now you don't even 'think' about applying a certain pressure to the brakes to engage them at the appropriate speed, it's now a moving function requiring no particular attention. It was the same way when you were learning how to read - had to sound out words, had to be able to tell the difference between 'b' & 'd' - it's much the same as with driving. So yes, in order to be able to gain sufficient familiarity to recognize a pattern identifying individual letter sequences is important; once the "pattern" exists in the mind, far less so.

 

[Gedunker]

Tehn why do I pause every time I read one of donk's posts where he has speed-typed teh word "teh" even though I know teh word is teh? ;-)

[OT] Hope all's well in the new work, donk :-} [/OT]