Word Wise

[trickykitty]

I've seen this many times, but still get a kick out of it whenever I see it. I'd like to actually figure the thing out from a cognitive standpoint, but that is a task very low on my list of to-do items.

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.

Here's a quiz. Take the word "ghoti". This word represents a common word in the English language and can be phonetically pronounced. What is it and why?

Comments

[smokedamage.livejournal.com]

i can read that simple because Pmac has typed like that since i've known him.

i wonder if it would work if you wrote it like that, as opposed to typed, because i have a suspicion that it is a visual thing only, and only because we are so used to reading the typed word.

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

Well, to be specific on terminology, it can't be a "visual thing only." Visual effects tend to only cover things like line orientations, shapes and colors. These are the kinds of effects isotripy is working on. Anything involving context-relevant data is being processed at a higher cognitive level, the stuff I'm working on. Since we still have no idea what takes place when going from a letter reader to an automatic word reader, the best guesses right now have to do with gist representation (versus verbatim representation) in the mind of words and how certain connections of words form sentences. I wonder if it would still be easy to read if the words where also mixed up within the sentences.

I do think you'd be correct regarding if it were handwritten versus typed. Some people have horrendous handwriting even though the words are spelled correctly, but we can still for the most part read that.

My real curiosity would be if say a Chinese person could still read a paragraph of Chinese characters which have minor changes in them. It's my understanding that even minor changes can transform the symbol into an entirely different word which doesn't even resemble the original word's meaning.

[smokedamage.livejournal.com]

correct about the chinese thing.

consider this

preboulpy

changing the orientation of the letters in this case rotating them 180 clockwise has changed the word to where it is unrecognisable.

We recognise words as shapes as well as the sequence of letters. Even though the shapes are arbitrary we have come to recognise them as having meaning. STOP. GO. WALK. CD-ROM. without even recognising these words we recognise them iconically.

Order of the words will effect changes in the meaning of the sentence since english is heavily reliant of word-order unlike a lot of other languages.

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

I may have to use preboulepy as a secret operative name some time. Pretty creative. I never knew that letters could be so twisted that way.

[isotripy.livejournal.com]

No its not just typed, but yes it is a visual thing. I write like that, but my writing cannot be read by anyone, even me, even if the letters were in the correct order.

[isotripy.livejournal.com]

Scrap that 'it is visual' , you confused me. I didn't confuse my self....
no it was definately you.


[insert comment to indicate silly mood here]

[smokedamage.livejournal.com]

you write with letters out of sequence?

[isotripy.livejournal.com]

Yup, when I'm writing fast I write the next letter before the one that comes before alot.

[smokedamage.livejournal.com]

is that only at the start of words? i do that sometimes.

have you ever done it in the middle of a word?

[isotripy.livejournal.com]

Normally only in the middle of words, it happens usually during lectures when I'm taking notes but not looking at what I am writing. There is a whole field of psycholinguistics devoted to speech errors, apparently by looking at errors you can unveil the procesesses underneath our performance. This angle is taken alot with perception too with visual illusuions.

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

That's kind of what we're doing with the dyslexia research. We're looking at the error rates of normal readers versus dyslexics. If we can understand the error rates, then we can understand the processes causing them.

[isotripy.livejournal.com]

What do you think of the magnocellular deficit theory of Dyslexia, the only theories I'm familiar with posit higher level sensory deficit (ie auditory - phonemic parsing and/or visual deficit of low spatial frequecies perception). But apparently there is alot of evidence inconsistent with these theories.

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

I will start getting more into reading up on the prior research regarding dyslexia once I'm done writing up an educational paper that's well-past overdue. What little I do know is based on a couple of slightly older books which concentrate on the behavioral side rather than neural side. The research is based on a strong hunch of my post-doc advisor who's done a lot of studying in this area.

The second part of my research will be to integrate our findings in a neural network with known brain areas. I think at that point I'll be able to get more involved with the magnocellular ideas because we will more than likely have to see if they too can be integrated with the model. It's a fine line, though, to make sure that we don't confound the model. At the moment I can't say either way, but since I'm a neuroscience-based person, I wouldn't discount the possibility that the problems are mostly cellular based. As for why, that remains to be seen.

The summer research problem, although we will be using neural substrates, is mostly behavior-based in an effort to label what the brain is actually doing and create better testing and teaching methods. If it leads to further research on the neural level then I will be happy.

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

In my neural networking class last semester we studied a few optical illusions in conjunction with the networks used to "explain" them. In one of my homework assignments I had to create a neural network to explain the Muller-Lyer illusion.

[trickykitty.livejournal.com]

P.S. This (http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/sze_muelue/) is my favorite web site regarding the Muller-Lyer illusion. I though you might enjoy it.

[smokedamage.livejournal.com]

interesting.

i might go troll the web for some reading.

Cheers