Researchers Create 'Sans Forgetica,' a Memory-Boosting Font (cnn.com)

OpenSourceAllTheWay writes: CNN reports on a new font that is purposely designed to more easily help students recall academic materials they read. From the report: "Australian researchers say their new font, called Sans Forgetica, could be the tool to help people retain information. The typeface, which slants to the side and has gaps in the middle, is not easy on the eyes. But according to the team at RMIT University in Australia who conceived Sans Forgetica, it has the perfect combination of 'obstruction' needed to recall information. The multidisciplinary team of typographic design specialists and psychologists said they designed Sans Forgetica using the learning principle called 'desirable difficulty.' The principle means that when obstruction is added to the learning process, people are required to make a little more effort and end up having better memory retention.

With normal fonts 'readers often glance over them and no memory trace is created,' RMIT senior lecturer Janneke Blijlevens said in a statement. Conversely, if a font is too difficult, memory is not retained. 'Sans Forgetica lies at a sweet spot where just enough obstruction has been added to create that memory retention,' she said. To get to that sweet spot, the researchers tested various fonts with roughly 400 Australian university students in a laboratory and an online experiment 'where fonts with a range of obstructions were tested to determine which led to the best memory retention,' RMIT said. 'Sans Forgetica broke just enough design principles without becoming too illegible and aided memory retention,' RMIT said."

Comments

My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[Bruce Perens]

OK, I understand the "slap in the face" strategy long used by memory enhancement experts, and inherent in "the peg", imagery, and other memory routines. The problem with this is that readers will become trained to it, until it is no more difficult to read than other fonts. Morse and his engineer intended people to read Morse Code off of paper tape, but it soon became clear that people could read it simply by the sound of the machine. Similarly, people's brains will work out an optimal strategy for reading deliberately-crippled fonts, and then there will no longer be a memory effect.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[The Evil Atheist]

There's no evidence that Chinese characters give Chinese people any trouble. I learned Chinese in kindergarten and I remember finding english very hard - because it was foreign. Nowadays I do find Chinese hard because I've forgotten most of it. But ask any Chinese person from high school onwards. There's no trouble at all.

It's like people asking me why I still use chopsticks, considering that knife and fork is easier. Well, it isn't for me, because I've been using chopsticks most of my life, but for some reason people assume that familiarity plays no role whatsoever and if they find chopsticks and Chinese hard, it must be hard for everyone.

Fuckin nonsense.

[denzacar]

Might as well suggest that one learns better and retains more memory about things seen through scratched up and filthy glasses.
Or by listening to a lecture while outside someone is tearing up the street with a jackhammer.

This is what happens when we allow behavioural economists and marketing people dabbling in psychology to be treated like serious scientists.

Re:Won't eat their own dog food

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not study material. Duh.