Slashdot Mirror
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.
Would one of those stupid comments about the colour scheme on /. be on-topic now?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I was reading what was written on her T-shirt!
"Evidence from the last 20 years of work in cognitive psychology indicates that we use the letters within a word to recognize a word."
Man, I'm so glad they finally figured this out...
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.
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?
The example:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
But soon enough there was a counter example:
Anidroccg to crad cniyrrag lcitsiugnis planoissefors at an uemannd, utisreviny in Bsitirh Cibmuloa, and crartnoy to the duoibus cmials of the ueticnd rcraeseh, a slpmie, macinahcel ioisrevnn of ianretnl cretcarahs araepps sneiciffut to csufnoe the eadyrevy oekoolnr.
In the counter example, the letters are not randomly scrabled, the letters are in reverse order, except the first and last letters.
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.
>renerding on firefox
re-nerding! ha ha. Best... typo... ever...
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
If there's those that have shied away from Microsoft, well because they're Microsoft, you might not be aware of http://research.microsoft.com which regardless of which side of various fences you might sit has some very interesting material and is generally worth tracking over time.
Aplogise for the tangent, on the back of this article seemed an apt place to point to the MS research site for those that might not of been aware of it.
They probably have already written papers on it ..... in their own languages.
..... 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.
..... 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.
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
If all this sounds inefficient, you have to remember that human beings are optimised for non-optimum conditions
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
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.
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!
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.