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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.
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."
Oh they must have been using EyeQ....
I can read at 44692 words per minute! Thanks for posting that long article for me to read, I needed the exercise.
And thank you EyeQ! Your the greatest!
Really though, they say that the more letters/words mean faster reading times. It's true. Think about a book or article you've read. When the words are together on the page it's easier to read because your eyes can jump around letting your brain fill in the blanks.
Ever read something that made sense but you couldn't quote it word for word? It's likely because you read in this same way.
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While reading the article, I suddenly become hyper-aware about how I was reading the article. :-)
Don't let the Microsoft name scare you off - the article makes for a fascinating look (pun intended) into how we read. I wonder, though, if these findings are duplicated with written Oriental languages.
You call this a signature?
Since most people in the world don't use the latin alphabet, it would be interesting to find out how word recognition works for them. And how they read words in our alphabet.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
I just searched around on google and these documents come up
Word Order in German
Kathol's analysis of German Word Order
I found myself becoming aware of how I read while I read. Fun! I agree with the author regarding letter recognition. The parallel aspect of word recognition is very interesting as well because it begins to explain why we are albe ot raed srcambled txet os eaisly!
Also, more work needs to be done to consider the visual cues outside the focus of attention. It is here that, I believe, shape and form cue the reader, more than letter shapes do, as to the potential content of the text to come. (Exactly how is for the geniuses.)
Blogging because I can...
You're right. It would seem that for better analysis comparing Hebrew/Chinese to English would be better.
Maybe we can learn even more about our way of reading, like: Is it the most efficient?
Is right to left, or left to right the best way to go.
Interesting side note (don't know why I'm bringing this up...) President #20, James A. Garfield could write in both Latin and Greek at the same time?
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>> How else would be understand a sentence like "The boy ate a ham___er" (with a few letters obscured)?
What a way to prove your point. I kept thinking "hamster", "hammer" and then eventually realised that I didn't spot your miss-spelling of 'we' and that I read right over it and filled in the blank.
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
If there's one real take-home lesson of brain-design from cognitive science, it's that the brain tends to do everything several different ways in parallel, and then use the results from all of them.
Obviously it can't all be shape, there are plenty of words with identical shapes and yet these are distinguishable.
But it could certainly be true that we use shape and parallel letter recognition at the same time. Shape narrows the field of possibilities from millions to a small handful, and then parallel recognition chooses one of the options.
Whatever happens, you can be sure it's terribly complicated, extremely robust and very efficient.
From the article: ...lowercase text is read faster than uppercase text.
This could also explain why nobody likes to read email where the other person uses all caps.
The FArticle does, in fact, address this, though not directly - it puts forth a theory that all letters in a word are absorbed simultaneously, and the brain re-orders them. This is given as theory #3, admittedly a ways down.
This gets me thinking, though, about the importance of context. If you drew the letters PLEORBM in a Scrabble game, it might take a while to see the word staring at you. But in the context of a (mangled) sentence: "you can sitll raed tish wouthit a pleorbm," it much more easily jumps out. Interesting.
Infants of English-speaking parents easily grasp the Korean distinction between a cylinder fitting loosely or tightly into a container. In other words, children come into the world with the ability to describe what's on their young minds in English, Korean, or any other language. But differences in niceties of thought not reflected in a language go unspoken when they get older.
Absolutely. And adults can "relearn" those distinctions, too; I found that as my Japanese studies progressed (started at 19, pretty close to native now) the range of things I was able to think about expanded considerably--so much so that now I sometimes have trouble speaking to people in English because English doesn't have a word for the concept I'm thinking about.
No, there's lots of study on the matter, and it's shown that Chinese people interpret their written language in a completely different part of the brain than english-reading people. That fact alone means a completely different method is at work... :)
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg - 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.
It also turned out to be mostly urban legend. There was some related research, but none that stated that claim. Bdeeiss, if taht was true, we cloud imoprve ceioomprssn aghilmorts by sinortg the mddile leertts aaabcehilllpty, scine tehir piinoosts are iaaeimmrtl.
-Lars
As a non-native (but fluent) speaker of English, and the husband of a fluent English speaker learning Danish, I can tell you quite well that there are many concepts that have a single word describing them in Danish but not in English, and vice-versa. Some words are normally considered equivalent but have slightly different extents ("pink" covers more colors than the common translation "lyserød", for instance).
The grandparent also didn't say "couldn't be expressed", but "has no word". Given enough verbiage, you can (probably) express any word in one language in any other language, but that's not what you want to do in conversation.
And if the "language of Shakespeare" is so all-encompassing, why has English since then been stealing words from other languages like a slum rat during a riot in a shopping mall? Mind you, I think this is a good feature that adds expressiveness to the language, but it clearly shows that there are things that English speakers consider important enough to be able to express succinctly that they'll bring in foreign words for it.
-Lars
Is right to left, or left to right the best way to go.
I remember reading about an interesting study into this. Apparently, there are a small number of people who have a particular form of brain damage which effectively reverses their perception. These people, if they were originally educated to read/write left to right, would afterwards naturally read/write right to left, or vice versa.
Apparently, once they get used to using their right hand with a style similar to that a left-hander would use (or vice-versa) they can read & write in the opposite direction at roughly the same rate a normal person can in the usual direction. The conclusion: the difference is not noticeable; neither left to right nor right to left is substantially more efficient (or any difference is also negated by the brain damage these people have suffered).
No, I can't cite references. I just came across it about 10 years ago, I don't even remember what I was studying at the time.
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It makes a big difference if your messed up words use common letter patterns (what, in the article he called 'Psuedowords'), or not.
Example:
'uesdnatnrd' wasn't to hard to recognize beacuase 'uesd' and 'tnrd' aren't letter patterns that exist in real words. So the mind works quicker to rearrange the letters to find a real word.
'aulaclty' was much harder because it's almost pronouncable. 'lac' and 'lty' are common patterns from real words, and 'aul' might not be common but it's pronouncable.
Just an observation.
Aw crap, ninjas!
Don't give any ideas to spammers on how to sneak their "pneis elnraegemnt ceram" past the filters. I do suspect that the effect is local to the small group of letters and long words that are totally randomized will be difficult to read.