Fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too!
Suteids sohw taht olny aoubt 55 prcenet of plepoe cna (atculley trheer is no scuh sudty). I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. Tihs sohws us the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at an Elingsh Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are in, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pclae. The rset of the txet cna be a taotl mses adn you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but isntaed raeds the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? Yaeh and we awlyas tghuhot slpelnig was ipmorantt!
I looked into it far enough to confirm that there is absolutely no such study on this topic at an English university.
Oaky, nwo erveoyne, qciukly sned tihs to yuor fvaortie Eginslh tahceer.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Cna yuo raed tihs?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
geart psot!
Kduos for tkaing the tmie to look itno...okay, that was taking way too much energy.
Kudos for looking into it. I'd always heard that the study was done at Stanford, but I was always a little suspicious.
Just the same, it seems to work. My next post in the blog may explain a little bit why that might be.
The following strong statement really got my attention:
"I looked into it far enough to confirm that there is absolutely no such study on this topic at an English university."
A casual search of the literature reveals that there has been quite a bit of research with respect to word order and word recognition.
More to the point, I think the particular study you are looking for is referenced:
RAWLINSON, G.E.(1976) The significance of letter position in word recognition. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England
This particular reference has been cited in peer-reviewed journals four times in the past four years. Four citations aren't much to get excited about, but Ph.D. theses are not cited too often for the obvious reason that they are not widely available.
Also of note, the fact that the citations are quite recent (from 2005 on) is likely due to viral interest from a chain email on the subject, which incorrectly suggested the study took place at Cambridge University.
As for specific claims about 55% of people being able to do this or that, I cannot say much as I do not have the time to further pursue the details related to the study, but rest assured, this is an active field of research--not just for fundamental (or "academic") reasons, but also for applied fields including consumer habits and advertising.
Post a Comment