Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy...

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.

Heh, seems to me like they are right!

I tinhk taht is a laod of blul pckuy.

I'm taking a class about memory right now... and I have to agree with the Cambridge study. In fact, I read the entire paragraph with no problem. The first and the last letters -are- the only thing that matter, so long as the letters in the middle are correct (they may be out of order). Reading is an automatic brain activity (the Stroop test proves that) and tests are done repeatedly on how, if you give people words that are broken up/with pieces missing, there's usually an initial response to what the word is that is almost always correct:

-fruit test-

app__
bana__
ora__
canto____
pine_____

Especially if persons are briefed on what the subject matter is, you can have as much as one letter (the first, usually) and they will be able to get it.

When I first saw that a few days ago I thought it was crazy until my friend pointed out that their misspellings are only a few letters off.. It's a lot easier to read that than it is to read..
Anircodcg to a rcshrecaeh at Cdbirgmae uvietrinsy.
So yaeh wlihe if treshes olny a few mpelsilnsg it's esay to raed but a lot can be mcuh mroe dluficift

Yeah, that's pretty damn sweet. But it also shows that if you proof-read by simply re-reading someone's essay/whatever, you're not doing them much help

That's why I think I'm really good at proof-reading, because when I do it, I actually look over each and every letter.

This sounds like some interesting research with a bogus conclusion. All they proved is that the human mind is adept at interpreting even poorly written and badly misspelled text and making sense out of it. I find that mispelled text much harder to get through.

I think it shows a lot more than that, Ananda... it says a lot about memory, and how the mind works--and how skills, when repeated over and over throughout life, become automated. Think of it this way, Ananda--can you turn your reading ability off? Can you look at a word and focus on not interpreting it? It's really hard not to (again, the Stroop test). So, with that in mind, scrambled letters making sense is very interesting because we should not be used to scrambled letters, but instead we are able to both read scrambled letters interpretively as well as give them meaning.

Tihs is tlatloy itsriteneng. Eevn wehn the lreetts are wlldiy trsoesapnd, I can siltl raed tehm at a good cilp, if I can get my mnid itno the rhigt satte.

Tnahks for pitsong tihs, Eggy. Too cool.

vrey itenresnitg

Hrm... I think the study is partially correct. The only problem that might occur is when you misspell a word and it ends up closer to a completely different word then the one you intended, then its quite unfun to read.

As to reading being automatic, try this:

Instead of reading the passage below, go along and try and name the color that the words are printed in.

red blue yellow green purple orange black pink

This is a great thing to do with someone pre-five years old. They'll be much better at it than you are.

Anyway. . .

Oneironaut--that's the Stroop test I mentioned. Children can do it better because reading is not yet automatic to them. We (older peoples) have problems doing it because our brain becomes so adjusted to reading over time, and so automatic, that it's hard to -turn it off-. It's like when you see a billboard that advertises some awful crap you never wanted to see, and you're like, "Maaan, I wish I never read that crap," but chances are, if it was in writing, and you saw the billboard at a glance, you would have read the advertisement unwillingly.

I love stuff like this...

Hmm... I wonder if the someone performed the Stroop test and compiled results based on brain hemispheric dominance... would be very interesting to see if it is easier for right brained people to name the colors, or if it is something that is more behavior/training-oriented...

I think I need to do some googling.

<- Loves leftie research, as well as studies on how the brain works... (:

O.o

Interesting... very interesting... (:

Apparently the anterior cingulate (the section of the brain in front of the corups callosum) is the one identified as helping out in the Stroop Test. It is theorized this part of the brain controls some of the interaction between lower and upper brain functions. Hmmm... question is, if it is the switchboard, does it call the right brain for help in tuning out the left brain and seeing only the color?

I still am wondering if people with right hemispheric dominance or central hemispheric dominance can tune out the text more readily than people primarily using the left brain... or maybe it's just a concentration issue...

I did a bit of searching, but I need to head to bed... if anyone else is as interested in this portion as me and finds something, please send me a link. (:

EDIT: Speaking of hemispheric dominance, here's a test you need to download, but is fairly small and will give you an idea of what hemisphere you are more dominant in, as well as if you are a visual or auditory learner.

Brain Dominance

I am equally dominant in both hemispheres, and almost equal in visual and auditory, with a slight preference to auditory (must be my poor eyesight hehe).

The way I'm learning it right now (in the class I'm taking; we're studying this kind of thing right this moment), it isn't a matter of right or left hemispheric thinking--in fact, the whole right/left/down/up brain sections work together, and, there is a lot being done to remove this notion that the right side controls creativity and the left controls academics etc. etc. According to my professor, one can train oneself to do the Stroop test with accuracy if one practices it over and over--however, we see colors so regularly that we are not sensitive to them, while writing requires active encoding in the brain. So it is very, very hard to learn the Stroop test.

What's REALLY gonna getchya involving the brain hemispheres, however, is that in the "old days" if one had extreme pervasive epileptic seizurs, a section of the brain in the center would be cut, splitting the right lobe of the brain from the left lobe. This helped with the seizurs. However, what would also happen to these people is that they would actively be confused with their everyday activities: one would open up a newspaper with his left hand, but then shut it with his right hand. This is because one half of the brain wants to read, the other doesn't. A person would go to their closet to pick out an outfit, and both arms would reach out to different outfits unwillingly--the different parts of the brain have a selection picked out, despite what the person actually desires for clothing. It's really interesting and I've seen videos in my Psych classes on people who had their brain cut down the center. (Nowadays, electroshock therapy is more commonly used than the brainsplitting method.)

Very interesting, Daemioth... I had read that people can train their hemispheres to do the tasks of one another as well as different theories that deal with possible hemispheric duty switch based on handedness, but I had not heard a lot about outright doing away with the theories on what the hemispheres actually do...

If you would either email or post here some references I could look at, I would love it... I haven't researched this stuff in a long time, and would like to get up to date again... heh I forgot how fascinating this all is to me.

I'm also interested in it because I can do the Stroop Test fairly easily (around 88+% accuracy) and was trying to research why. (:

I have performed a tad bit of research hunting on corpus callosum splits and the findings therof in the past... yes, it's very interesting stuff. (:

This is interesting . . .I'm teaching a college-level remedial reading class right now and the textbook we use focuses on the function of the "angular gyru" the organ that translates written symbols into sound. If it's true that spelling is unimportant when reading, except for the first and last letters of a word, then what I'm teaching from this textbook is mostly wrong in the sense that training yourself to pay attention to spellings when sight reading, especially for an "adult" or older reader who is trying to learn to read better, is going to be working contrary to the natural inclination of the brain to make meaning out of whatever we see on the page. Then again, perhaps when it comes to learning to read -- especially for "adult" or "older" students (because we know that language acquisition becomes much, much harder after about the age of 12 or so -- at least according to cognitive linquistics) then perhaps the brains of these readers simply aren't fully trained to "fill in the blanks" yet? I'm really curious what impact this will have on the teaching of reading . . . I'm *not* an expert by any means however, this is a one-shot class that I was hired to teach because no one else was there to do it. I'm trained as a writing teacher -- and the two things are less similair than you might imagine . In terms of teaching, that is. But I'd be curious to know what textbook writers are going to do with this, if anything . . .

Zana

I just had to post this link as it's something that has fascinated me since I first heard about it - sorry if I've gone slightly OT

hydrocephalus... where the cerebral fluid is under too high a pressure for the brain to develop properly. Usually it results in early death or severe retardation, but a handfull of people grow up normally, not even knowing they are missing 90% or their brain!

Click here for a brief article on it: http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=2009

So one has to wonder, how these people can even read, let alone remember what they have read, when they dont even HAVE any hemispheres!

Mind != Brain. Spirit != Body.

I am reminded of a story I read in the newspaper some years back of a little girl who was supposedly born without a brain. Doctors decided to drain some of the excess fluid in her skull to releive some of the pressure in her skull. As they were draining the fluid an intersting thing started happening. A brain began to appear. The excess fluid had compressed it till it was undetectable, and as the fluid was removed her brain began to unfold. Sounds to me it is highly likely that such is the case with alot of these instances mentioned in the article.

First define Mind, Brain, "Spirit" (?) and Body, then provide some modicum of evidence to back it up.
Proof by assertion was already outdated in Ancient Greece, let alone today.

Eggy we've been down this road before in this forum. It's like trying to describe an elephant to someone who insists on being blind (or something like that).

Mind is what you think and imagine with, and the repository of your memories.

Body is what you get around in, you know, that thing with arms and legs and such?

Brain is the control and sensory interpretation center for the body.

Spirit is you.

I'm not going to offer you any evidence out of any second-hand sources. Hearsay can always be shot down, as you and others have demonstrated. I'll simply tell you that personally I have been outside my own body. I clearly remember having other bodies in the past, and I remember picking this one up when it was born. That's why I assert that I am not the same thing as my body.

It may be a little arrogant for me to say the same is true for others. I admit I cannot prove that YOU exist.

Proof by assertion may be out of fashion, but be careful you don't fall into the fad of this era, namely assuming that one thing is the same as another simply because they have related characteristics.

I've wondered. When the spirit passes from one body to another during reincarnation, is the transfer lossless? Or do bits and pieces of the spirit get lost from data compression?

I'm feeling rather Moire-speckled this time around, see.