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

[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

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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!