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MS Psychologist on How We Read

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the can-you-raed-tihs dept.

RenderMonkey writes "In another follow-up to Can You Raed Tihs? Microsoft's Kevin Larson, a cognitive psychologist, dissected the main hypotheses on how we read at ATypI's Vancouver Typography conference. "Kevin supports the 'parallel letter recognition' model. People don't he says, recognise whole-word shapes. Instead the recognise each of the letter components and then make a series of best-guesses on the information returned to assemble, first, phonemes and then words." So what about the case of patterned re-ordering, aka the counter example to Can You Raed Tihs?"

8 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. What the hell? by OverRated · · Score: 3, Funny

    Microsoft has a psychologist?

    1. Re:What the hell? by marine_recon · · Score: 3, Funny

      of course microsoft has a psychologist. otherwise who would have sat through the product tester groups and prevent them all from committing suicide?

      --
      Jack the sound barrier. Bring the noise.
    2. Re:What the hell? by freeweed · · Score: 2, Funny

      Was she cunning?

      Those are my favorite kinds of linguists, especially when they're female :)

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
    3. Re:What the hell? by Moofie · · Score: 2, Funny

      Microsoft has product tester groups?

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
  2. oh Gawd.... by Mr.Zong · · Score: 3, Funny

    Great....a justification for Leet speak...

    1. Re:oh Gawd.... by kurosawdust · · Score: 5, Funny

      t3h f|3xiBi|+y 0f teh hu/\/\@n /\/\inD 0\/\/ns j00!

  3. Microsoft Invests where the Profit is by Orne · · Score: 4, Funny

    Look people, enough grumbling about Microsoft and their psychology department... as a corporation who's main product is a human-machine interface, it is in their best interest to understand and maximize everything that eases these tasks.

    They studied eye strain, and whipped up an improved font display system called ClearType. Windows XP has a Speech module in the control panel that's getting pretty good at speaking random text. Word and their Spelling modules are pretty good, but English isn't the only language.

    Microsoft is obviously positioning itself for something big. Is this a new phase for improving Spell Checking - mimic the brain's methods for decoding scrambled text into a word? Is it time for Microsoft to take on Babelfish's language conversion -- on-the-fly language converting instant messaging with better results. New OCR technology for converting text embedded in images? Whatever it is, there's money to be made.

    Finally, don't you find it ironic that an article on word recognition contains spelling errors?
    2: The reader recognbises each letter in turn ...

    1. Re:Microsoft Invests where the Profit is by the+pickle · · Score: 2, Funny

      Look people, enough grumbling about Microsoft and their psychology department... as a corporation who's main product is a human-machine interface, it is in their best interest to understand and maximize everything that eases these tasks.

      Last I checked, Microsoft's Human Interface R&D department was headquartered at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino.

      Windows XP has a Speech module in the control panel that's getting pretty good at speaking random text.

      Which other operating systems have had the ability to do since the early 1990s, and even earlier if you're willing to accept a bit of a quality hit.

      Hey, don't shoot me; I'm just the messenger.

      p

      --
      In Korea, long hair is for old people!