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Ligebility Raserch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy
Posted by dezcom in
18 May 2004 — 3:46pm
18 May 2004 — 3:46pm
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a ttoal 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.
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18 May 2004 — 4:01pm
Yeah, qiute amzanig, it wokrs.
That has been published in Italy in the article "Buona lettura"
(taken from "New Scientist" http://www.newscientist.com/),
on pag. 46, n. 504 of "Internazionale," http://www.internazionale.it/
(5-11 September 2003).
In Italian:
Asosltuaenmte speutfaecnte!
Il pteore fnenmeoale dlela mnete umnaa.
Sceodno una rcrecia sovtla nllea Uinervtis
18 May 2004 — 6:18pm
but deosn't that throw off the whole bouma thing, Hrant? *jab*
18 May 2004 — 7:08pm
But dj shadow stays the same if the font is kerned?
18 May 2004 — 7:14pm
Okay, now I bouma. Good night,
18 May 2004 — 8:37pm
This is a hoax. The sample text is carefully selected, and the whole idea falls apart as soon as you start trying to apply it to other, longer and more complex texts. This was thoroughly debunked last September, when it first made the rounds of the Internet.
18 May 2004 — 11:25pm
> This was thoroughly debunked
?
That's funny - that's not how I remember it.
Even if some samples (there were more than one) were "tailored" to maximize readability, the phenomenon is still there, and has to be explained. And I'm happy to report that "bouma theory" actually explains it very well! :-) Remember: the "envelope" matters a lot.
hhp
19 May 2004 — 2:05am
Mr. Jhon Hdsuon I wouldn't call this fact a hoax.
I can tell you that the very same sentence
it has been translated in Italian, and it works;
the last October, when I shared that new with a friend
in Finland, he wrote me back setting his short text
in that way, and I read it straight away.
Mr. Harnt Paapzian, what you mean with "envelope"?
19 May 2004 — 7:18am
Envelope: fuzzy external outline. I used to use "silhouette", but John actually made me realize that implies internal borders as well, and I need a term for just the outside (because the inside is lost in the parafovea, which accounts for the bulk of immersive reading).
hhp
19 May 2004 — 8:49am
>that "bouma theory" actually explains it very well
Not really. The simple fact is that anagrams are easy to solve when their first and last letters are fixed, and a sentence of such anagrams is no problem for fluent readers.
Boumas are a marginal phenomenon that has little bearing on the basic process of reading (immersive or otherwise), which is concerned with the identification of letter sequences, not word shapes.
19 May 2004 — 8:54am
You're about 105 years too late, my friend!
Letterwise reading is for little boys.
hhp
19 May 2004 — 9:13am
Always read Snopes before posting forwarded emails ;o)
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp
19 May 2004 — 9:26am
But the pniot is taht it deos mttaer.
Eevn tghout wdros of terhe or lses lttrees are not actffed at all and fuor ltteer wdros are brleay acfeeftd, rdnaieg is sltil unclmbftrooae.
The fact that it can be read relatively quickly, in short bursts where the letters aren't too mixed up, doesn't make it true that 'it doesn't matter what order they're in so long as first and last are right'. Try reading a novel, subtitles, or an employment contract like that, you'll find that it matters.
19 May 2004 — 10:25am
>Letterwise reading is for little boys.
And bouma reading is for the mentally fuzzy, my friend!
In identifying a word by its sequence of letters, the reader does not proceed "letterwise", but gathers only as much information as is necessary, by rapidly scanning back and forth, with saccadic eye motions, and combining foveal and parafoveal information.
You assume that parafoveal vision is used to identify words by their overall shape, but there is no proof of this.
In the "letter sequence" model of reading, parafoveal vision is used to provide a rough set of options as to how many letters there are in a word, and what the individual letters might be. If the context of the sentence does not provide closure on a particular interpretation, then foveal examination is used to determine the word.
19 May 2004 — 10:36am
> bouma reading is for the mentally fuzzy
Exactly. All human minds.
> You assume that parafoveal vision is used to identify words
> by their overall shape, but there is no proof of this.
Oh yes there is. How much have you studied readabilty?
> parafoveal vision is used to provide a rough set of options
Have you been listening to Larson? Too much, it seems.
His view is certainly convenient: it makes type design much easier (and more artsy).
Letterwise reading fails in the light of both empirical and anecdotal evidence.
It cannot explain for example how:
1) Empirical: saccades span about three times the coverage of the fovea, with the parafovea unable to convey individual letters.
2) Anecdotal: Serifs helps readabililty, and loose letterspacing utterly destroys it.
And there's something even worse about the letterwise model: it goes against the general heuristic mechanism of the brain, which is a fuzzy, guesswork-based system. Reading is like Chinese cuisine: nothing gets wasted - even the chicken feet are consumed. With the aid of linguistic context, the parafovea provides enough clues to identity clusters of letters (which is all it can convey anyway), speeding up reading - why not use the available information?
Immersive reading is a liminal, performance-based task: there is no time for separate letters (most of the time).
hhp
19 May 2004 — 10:52am
Wasn't there a thread on this subject about 6 months ago?
19 May 2004 — 12:04pm
I posted part of a forwarded mail on this topic
on Tuesday, May 18, 2004 - 4:01 pm.
Mr. Darrel Austin's suggestion is very funny in a way,
because now I would like to know his interpretation
of the difference between a mail and a forwarded one.
I do agree with Mr. Steve Paxton, I don`t think this
game goes in aid of information clarity, but it is
maybe like palindromic art.
About the "envelope" it is a nice meta-word for that.
Very interesting about the parafoveal & foveal vision.
19 May 2004 — 12:27pm
<font class="dontLookLikeCrap">"because now I would like to know his interpretation
of the difference between a mail and a forwarded one."
Pretty much anything that Grandma forwarded on to you with ">>>>>>" indents and a CC: list a mile long deserves a trip to Snopes first. ;o)</font>
19 May 2004 — 12:58pm
>Thanks for introducing me to "Snopes."
>I have never seen it before.
>I'll have to tell my Grandmother about it
cc: the Univers
:-)
19 May 2004 — 1:29pm
* <font >
What is that Mr. Darrel Austin?
* Pretty much anything that Grandma forwarded
Why Grandma? Is that an English expression?
I wonder who are the crazy dudes behind Snopes site.
20 May 2004 — 6:05am
This is the thread that's being referred to.
R
20 May 2004 — 10:17am
>How much have you studied readabilty?
Hrant, please zip your fly.
You present your reading theories as if they are reality supported by all the latest scientific research, when in fact the issue is wide open. As Matt Davis of the Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge University put it, citing various recent scientific research,
"Clearly, the debate about whether we read using information from individual letters or from whole words is far from over.
In this thread, I suggested that the "ligebility" phenomenon presented in the hoax could be explained without recourse to the deep level of physiological reading theory, which is contested, but at the level of the problem -- which is solving anagrams.
It's Occam -- the simpler explanation is better.
But I don't think we're so far apart as you would imply with your "letterwise little-boy" diss.
Consider these two statements from earlier in the thread:
1 (mine) In the "letter sequence" model of reading, parafoveal vision is used to provide a rough set of options as to how many letters there are in a word, and what the individual letters might be. If the context of the sentence does not provide closure on a particular interpretation, then foveal examination is used to determine the word.
2 (yours) With the aid of linguistic context, the parafovea provides enough clues to identity clusters of letters
What's the difference between a sequence of letters and a cluster of letters?
20 May 2004 — 10:20am
OK, you win the [imagined] cockfight.
hhp
20 May 2004 — 10:35am
Humm, sorry, I looked up the dictionary,
I thought "hoax" means "comedy",
and since that was debated & debunked
I thought maybe it was not a comedy,
but "hoax,"yes, it is different:
Function: transitive verb
Etymology: probably contraction of hocus:
to trick into believing or accepting as genuine
something false and often preposterous.