Re: How do we read?

["Chuck Martin" <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com>]

"Sean Brierley" <seanb_us -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote in message
news:212856 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 
>
> Instructions: Just read the sentence straight through
> without really
> thinking about it.
>
> Acocdrnig to an elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of
> letetrs in a wrod dosen't mttaer, the olny thnig
> thta's iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of
> eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be
> jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut
> dclftfuiiy.
>
I found it hard *not* to think about it, at least on some level.

It'd be interesting to see just how that study was laid out. One thing I
learned was that reading doesn't take in a word at a time, but phrases. Your
eye jumps to discrete points on the page. And one thing that's very
important in recognizing words is word shape (which is one reason why all
caps is harder to read).

About halfway through reading that paragraph, I realized that I was
recognizing words, but that I was stopping on many of them to figure out
what they said. To me, it was an increase in cognitive load.

One of the problems of rearranging internal letters is that it can change
the word shape. For me, while I could anagram all the words as written on
the fly, it certainly took me longer. From this study of one, I'd say that
while I can agree with the English university study conclusion that the
words can be read, the effort to do so, on both a conscious and an
unconscious level seems to be increased.

How's that for a Friday analysis--and it's still (barely) morning here.

Chuck Martin