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

[rtb61]

Not quite, it will inherently diminish understanding because it simply requires more mental effort to read ie that greater mental effort required to read it, of course stimulates greater recall because you are putting much more mental effort in, especially when tired. Anyone outside of silly people using it, well no because it takes considerably more mental effort to read, greater pattern association processing is required, the problem there, it inherently will diminish thought being put into understanding what has been read, you really want to get that understanding in as early as possible to build a proper mental framework for more study. Japanese have a similar problem, with so much effort required to learn the Japanese language, it diminishes the amount that can be learned using the Japanese language.

Same with this font, test well in theory but it will diminish overall learning, beyond rote learning, so more effort consumed in the learning process, resulting in less learned. Of course if you write notes by hand, well, good luck. It is far better to sit through a lecture with pencil and pad, than with a computer, unless you want to spend that lecture time completing other assignments .

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[Desler]

The Koreans were smart, and got rid of that,

No they didn't. Korean uses Chinese characters, too. They call it Hanja.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[Toth]

It allows for another level in Japanese poetry and even given names.
There are multiple Chinese characters that have the same sound in Japanese. One can write a poem that meets all the rhythm and meter in Japanese with the choice of characters for the sound adds another level of complexity or meaning.

It appears to be the same for given names. We had an exchange student whose given name was Jiro.

Jir can be written using different kanji characters and can mean:

, "next, son"
, "next, melodious"
, "second, son"
, "second, melodious"
, "reign, son"

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[sg_oneill]

Not quite, it will inherently diminish understanding because it simply requires more mental effort to read ie that greater mental effort required to read it, of course stimulates greater recall because you are putting much more mental effort in, especially when tired. Anyone outside of silly people using it, well no because it takes considerably more mental effort to read, greater pattern association processing is required, the problem there, it inherently will diminish thought being put into understanding what has been read, you really want to get that understanding in as early as possible to build a proper mental framework for more study. Japanese have a similar problem, with so much effort required to learn the Japanese language, it diminishes the amount that can be learned using the Japanese language.

Same with this font, test well in theory but it will diminish overall learning, beyond rote learning, so more effort consumed in the learning process, resulting in less learned. Of course if you write notes by hand, well, good luck. It is far better to sit through a lecture with pencil and pad, than with a computer, unless you want to spend that lecture time completing other assignments .

Pure speculation. Memory and reason are not separate apparatus, and the idea that 'rote' learning doesn't lead to understanding is somewhat of a myth that isn't supported by the research. The thing is, we don't remember stuff we don't particualrly understand as well as things we do, and conversely we rarely understand things we can't remember. The two processes are intrinsically intertwined, and in fact as best as we can tell the neurons that do the reasoning ARE the neurons that store the memories.

Now obviously its not quite as simple as that. But the idea that the brain is a computer with separate RAM and CPU is straight up fictional.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[HarrySquatter]

Darn snobbery. But at least the limit is only around 1800 glyphs for South Koreans.

Most Japanese limit themselves to Joyo kanji which is only just over 2000 to be considered literate. A couple extra hundred isn't that much more to learn by the time you're 17-18. Very few ever go beyond that let alone to get level 1 in Kanji Kentei which requires knowing over 6000 kanji plus obscure readings, etc.

Re: My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[TimMD909]

I have glaucoma. My vision in my right eye has suffered. It's harder to read for me now. These are facts. Now to my idea you inspired: my reading comprehension has seemed to improve as I have to spend more effort in focusing my eyes to read. I think it's a function of how much time I spend reading sentences. I was rushing when I should have spent time contemplating each sentence. Now I'm forced to, in a sense. Could it be simply as easy as re-reading every sentence to gain the same benefits this font claims it has? Basically, just slow the fuck down?

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[Chris Mattern]

at least the limit is only around 1800 glyphs for South Koreans.

It's not much more in modern Japanese--about 2200. Post World War II, the Japanese did massive simplification of kanji, cutting it back to 2000. While it's not generally illegal to use the older characters, it is illegal to use them in official documents, and publishers can only be assured that their readers will know the official characters (you're supposed to know them all by the end of elementary school).

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[nospam007]

"Not quite, it will inherently diminish understanding because it simply requires more mental effort to read ie that greater mental effort required to read it, of course stimulates greater recall "

I thought Courrier and Elite were already perfect for that.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[angel'o'sphere]

You are mixing up hiragana with katakana.

Most Japanese sentences are a mix of kanji (mostly used for nouns) and hiragana used for grammar structures and verbs (that is simplified).

Kanji you simply memorize. There is no "deciphering" like reading a complicated english word as "deciphering". Kanji spring while reading into your mind just like spoken language. Your brain/mind does not even use the same brain area for reading them as you would in reading letters or hiragana/katakana (Kana).

The Korean have absolutely no advantage. Their script is a syllable script just like Hiragana/Katakana, albeit they have more syllables. In other words: they have (nearly) the same deciphering work to do as a english speaker reading english, or god forbid: german :D

You can write Japanese fully in Hiragana, btw. If you only know the sound of the words, aka the words, but no the Kanji, you write it in Hiragana.

Many Haiku are Hiragana only, however strict rules involve to have at least one, or two Kanji in a Haiku.

Wow, I'm impressed, the english spelling correction on the Mac realizes: Kana, Hiragana, Katakana, Kanji, and Haiku without complaints ...

Re: My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[Darinbob]

I don't think they do increase comprehension. Most speed reading is essentially skimming.

Hate to add real info to slashdot, but... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[hankwang]

"The Korean have absolutely no advantage. Their script is a syllable script just like Hiragana/Katakana, albeit they have more syllables."

AFAIK Korean (Hangul) is an alphabetic system, just with the "letters" stacked to form a syllabic character that superficially resembles a Chinese character. You only need to memorize 24 "letters" to read and pronounce it.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[Zontar The Mindless]

I'm not convinced that using 1/5 the space automatically saves you 4/5 of the time required to read it (or write it, for that matter).

I suppose it's possible that Chinese sign-makers use a lot less paint per sign than do their Western counterparts, though.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[stealth_finger]

Mine is called Fake Newsica. It's the new font for CNN and the failing New York Times.

Also good for white house press releases.

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.

Re:My New Font Is Called Ophidian Lubrica

[bluefoxlucid]

I've noticed I read words by prediction: I know what words should come in the sentence, and will fill in what should be there. Word shape, length, position, and context determine what I see; sometimes I'm not even looking at the area of text I'm reading, instead inspecting the shape of the paragraph as a whole (including where white spaces occur) and "reading" the text entirely by prediction.

A not-insignificant part of this process is creating and integrating a theory-of-mind model of the writer: I'm simulating your thoughts, mannerisms, and speech patterns in my head. As consequence, I can have rather dramatic apparent personality shifts internally, although I assume most people don't notice because I tend to reflexively squelch that externally.

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:Fuckin nonsense.

[The Evil Atheist]

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

So the actual psychologists they have working on it are really behavioural economists and marketing people dabbling in psychology, as opposed to being actual psychologists that they actually are?

Comic Sans seems to work just fine for that

[greenwow]

I seem to remember everything I read that uses that font since it makes me so angry.

20 20

[bugs2squash]

I could probably get a pair of eye glasses and splatter them with paint or crack one of the lenses and get this effect with every font.

Literally HALF a stencil font???

[UnknownSoldier]

This font looks like shit and is even harder to read. I can't believe they literally used HALF a stencil font. WTF? Looks like I will be forgetting that crappy font.

I can even picture an xkcd for this:

Researcher 1: Hey, lets take a Stencil font and drop 50% of each of the individual glyphs.
Researcher 2: Won't that make it harder to read?
Researcher 1: Students will become so frustrated trying to read the words that it will actually increase remembering it!
Researcher 2: Brilliant!

Narrator: That brilliant idea when you are high isn't so brilliant when you aren't.

Won't eat their own dog food

[Chris Mattern]

I noticed that their site doesn't use the font except when it shows you examples. The site content text doesn't use it.

Re:Won't eat their own dog food

[DNS-and-BIND]

It's not study material. Duh.

Re:Won't eat their own dog food

[Chris Mattern]

you will forever remember that time you lost an argument on the Internet.

I would've thought we'd all learned by now that nobody ever loses an argument on the Internet--just ask them.

A better name for the font

[Tablizer]

Sanzheimers

EXACTLY!

[bussdriver]

This is just a first step. They will need to determine how long changes take for adaptation and then techniques to modify the font over time so you can't ever learn it.

I read a study a while ago on Dyslexic Fonts and they found that they do help over unknown fonts but the well known fonts like Helvetica did best because they are heavily trained which caused it to beat the special fonts. This study could impact future ones because additional factors could be involved that weren't previously considered.

The same as using Comic Sans

[psnyder]

These people completely misunderstand "desirable difficulty". From the article:

The multidisciplinary team of typographic design specialists and psychologists said they designed Sans Forgetica using the learning principle called "desirable difficulty."

Using this font has nothing to do with desirable difficulty unless you're training yourself to read wonky fonts.

Cranking out the old template

[gringer]

Your post advocates a

(X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante ( ) form-based

approach to fighting memory loss. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mail and other legitimate text uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
(X) It will stop memory loss for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of facebook will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
(X) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from people with memory loss
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many text users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
(X) This meme is tired and worn out and I'm just as likely to get a -1 troll as a +5 funny.
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
(X) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of writing
(X) Huge existing software investment in fonts
(X) Susceptibility of brain paths other than glyph recognition to memory loss
(X) Willingness of users to install new fonts
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
(X) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do need to read things
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
(X) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
(X) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of established writing systems
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatibility with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!