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Skilled Readers Recognize Words By Shape
hessian writes "Skilled readers can recognize words at lightning fast speed when they read because the word has been placed in a visual dictionary of sorts, say Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) neuroscientists. The visual dictionary idea rebuts the theory that our brain 'sounds out' words each time we see them."
Pop quiz! who read it correctly? who read it "first post"?
I always suspected that I read like that. I only have to spell words I don't know, or chop them up into syllables.
-- Cheers!
Interesting- I read about two or three times as fast as my wife and we've talked abou this before.
(frustrating when trying to read an e-mail together on the same PC at the same time).
She does sound out words in her head- I don't- I just tend to zip over them. There again- speed has its consequences- she tends to remember what she read better than I do.
I'll be reading a book and then realise I've been on auto-pilot for the last 3 pages and actually have no recollection of what I just read.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Interesting. I was under the impression that this is common sense. Maybe I should have spoken it out aloud in order to get all the praise. ;) Pretty interesting still to know that this is scientifically proven now. I wonder if this could be used for learning another language.
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 total 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. Amzanig huh?
My daughter come home from 2nd Grade every week with a list of 'sight-words' to focus on - that is, words that were intended to be immediately recognized, not sounded out.
Glad modern science has caught up with elementary school.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Yes it is a visual dictionary and if it is a cache-miss, then the fallback behavior is to re-parse the word slowly and sound it out. After a few encounters with a strange word it becomes visually cached as well. Parsing a word is far slower, of course, and is not the default behavior.
It's already been well established that at least many people read this way.
Its common knowledge that most people can read normal (lower) case text faster than upper case text. And it has long been surmised that its due to the much better word shape diversity of lower case.
Its also common knowledge that most people can read jumbled up words with very little difficulty, as long as the first and last letters are correct, and the rest of the letters are in there in a random order.
Such as:
"I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd waht I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in waht oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae."
Given the number of people who can read the above almost effortlessly, anyone clinging to the theory that fast readers are "sounding words out" needs to be clubbed over the head with a baseball bat.
It also rebuts the premise of the article that we read by word shape. Its clearly a bit more complicated than that.
I expect we simultaneously look at word shape, the leading and closing letters, the length, and the middle letters along with some "predictive" matching based on context cues so we can narrow down likely candidate words that "fit" the sentence.
When the British decided to implement their current system of road direction signs, they switched from all-caps to mixed-case precisely for this reason: people remember the general shapes of words and the positioning of ascenders and descenders, thus people found it far easier to distinguish, say, "Brighton" than "BRIGHTON". This was many decades ago - how is this news?
Microsoft, of all places, has a pretty good webpage on this.
Check out the "Model 1: Word Shape" section, in which this theory is described as "oldest model in the psychological literature, and is likely much older than the psychological literature"
There's some other interesting sections there too, like the moving window study.
Lets start refering to The War Against Terror by it's initials. . .
As I read, I read to myself in my head, not sounding out letters, but the words as I go. Whenever I see this example of transposition, that voice in my head starts to sound like it has Down syndrome.
read subjects.