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The Science of Word Recognition
neile writes "I stumbled across a fascinating paper over at the Microsoft Typography site today that provides a really nice overview of the different theories on how humans read. If you thought we read by recognizing word shapes, think again! With the assistance of fancy eye-tracking cameras researchers have been able to devise several clever experiments to give us new insight into how reading works." We've linked to some of Larson's work previously.
Does anyone else think that merely analyzing how english is read is very closed minded? I'm pretty sure only a very small percentage of the world speaks and reads english.
I would love to see a study comparing how english is read to how chinese is read by native speakers. Very interesting i would gather.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Everybody seems to be giving this guy a hard time because he did his research for reading only English. My guess is that the guy reads/speaks English and has ready access to people who do the same. This research is a good start and seems to have valuable results.
Now someone else can work on a PhD Thesis by taking his work and seeing if it applies in other languages.
Isn't this how science works? You do research, try to make some conclusions, and publish the results. If you wait to publish until you've found the Grand Unified Theory of Everything, then nobody publishes anything and science doesn't advance at all.
I'm not sure that he missed anything. He has started with what he knows and has resources to study.
To pretend that these experiments apply to humanity in general rather than the author's own language/script choice is silly.
You know what is also silly? To pretend that this was the conclusion, although clearly the paper nowhere stated that it had found the grand unified theory of how people read. Here's a hint: when the paper talks about reading, it is obviously talking about reading English.
Yes, the paper would be even more interesting if it included studies of other scripts, and the failure to acknowledge the existence of other scripts should be criticised. But the rest of your criticism is unfounded.
Actuallythesplittingintowordsisnotnecessarytounder standwhatiswritteniftheorderoflettersiscorrect.Thi s"proves"thatyouarereadingbytheletter,notbytheword .(relyingonslashcodetoinsertameaninglessspaceevery nowandthen:-))
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I am sure that we've seen this e-mail floating around. Doesn't it seem like we read in shapes?
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer inwaht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!