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.

Comments

Eye movements?

[ImaLamer]

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.

Reading about how we read

[DrFrasierCrane]

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.

What about other writing systems?

[mocm]

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.

Re:What about other writing systems?

[ajs318]

They probably have already written papers on it ..... in their own languages.

Want my theory? I think the brain uses multiple techniques in parallel, then releases resources from the ones found to be going nowhere. So at any one time you may be trying to read a word letter-by-letter, recognising the word from the Bouma shape, and picking likely words from context. The different techniques will have different successes depending on various factors (clean type vs. messy handwriting, familiar vs unfamiliar words, &c). So my theory is that the brain is trying various methods at the same time, each narrowing down the possibilities, and just goes with whatever produces a result first. As soon as that happens, any half-finished tests in progress are scrapped and their resources deallocated. The eye movements may well have something to do with this ..... different reading techniques require different resolutions, the eye is great at recognising outlines but needs to zero-in on details, once a clue is established from the word envelope. There is evidence that fonts such as Times are more readable than Helvetica, so maybe serifs add recognisability in their own way? And if this is what is happening, then it would explain some of the test results in the article too, since they were looking for a single technique in use at any one time.

If all this sounds inefficient, you have to remember that human beings are optimised for non-optimum conditions ..... for instance, we have kidneys that pack up if you drink nothing but de-mineralised water, and an immune system that goes berserk and tries to poison you with histamine if it doesn't get enough germs to fight off.

Re:I love how

[ImaLamer]

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?

Re:Reduced Redudancy

[Placido]

>> 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.

or maybe it's both?

[Illserve]

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.

Don't shout!

[meckardt]

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.

Re:I love how

[dave420]

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... :)

Re:I'm not sure I buy it.

[ideonode]

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.

amusing test...

[zozzi]

I enjoy giving people this test: Write a long sentence and make sure that the last word of the sentence is a filler word. Then write that filler word again at the start of the next sentence and write some more. Eg:

Yesterday I went to the beach and saw the
the boat I always dreamt about.

~ 7 out of 10 people fail to spot it, even if told beforehand there's an obvious error. Somehow music people are more prone to spot the error straight away.

Interesting observation

[lazyl]

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.

Re:REKANYZE!

[iamacat]

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.

Re:Thought comes before language

[alanxyzzy]

why has English since then been stealing words from other languages like a slum rat during a riot in a shopping mall?

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary."
- James D. Nicoll