The Science of Word Recognition
Kevin Larson from Microsoft’s Advanced Reading Technology group has a facinating paper titled – The Science of Word Recognition. He states that…
Evidence from the last 20 years of work in cognitive psychology indicate that we use the letters within a word to recognize a word. Many typographers and other text enthusiasts Ive met insist that words are recognized by the outline made around the word shape.
Kevin’s article that is based on research that proves otherwise and points to many peer reviewed studies.
[link via mezzoblue]
I have actually seen something similar to this before via slashdot..
the article i read, sorry I can’t remember where it was exactly, stated that we use the size of the word, and the first/last letters to recognize the word – as opposed to the shape/contents of the word. For instance so long as the first and last letter of the word remain correct, it doesn’t matter what order the inner letters are in – we can still generally read an understand the writing – here is an example:
its pterty wlid taht you can fgiure out waht semonoe is syiang eevn wehn the wrdos are all srmabelcd up.
Some scrambled words are harder to recognize than others – but in general it is amazing how well most people do with a text in this fashion.
I don’t think people can read as quickly when looking at text that is mucked up – but the fact that we can read it without significant pause is pretty remarkable.
As Bill says, I wonder how the “shape” theory could be true while this below is working so well :
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteres are at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a tatol mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.
Research at Cambridge University, huh? People are so gullible. . . Have you thought about the fact that you already know what the paragraph is about before you read it? What about the context? It’s possible to guess a word even if all you see is _ _ _ _ _ if it’s the right context. And what about this sentence, can you read it? :
An altelusoby, roluisculidy portesuropes calutocenotipasin!