Hvae you seen tihs beofre?
Image: Pixabay (public domain)
Tihs fnsactiiag isnhigt itno how the mnid wroks recad anourd the irentent a few yraes bcak:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheerear at an Elingsh 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 is in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by itslef but the wrod as a wlohe.
To me, this suggests just how much ‘processing power’ is at work in the subconscious mind. What are we doing when we read? We are absorbing meaning through the symbols on the page or screen. This takes greater mental effort than simply listening, although that’s an act of interpretation as well.
But what the above paragraph demonstrates, I think, is how our minds are capable of applying instinctual responses to analytical situations. Clearly we’re not reading every letter of the scrambled word; we are understanding it as a whole, instantly, much like we would have assessed a food opportunity or life threat back on the savannah a few hundred thousand years ago. And now this skill is helping us to decipher language almost instantly, even when it is encoded.
Perhaps language is now the crucial survival tool that our physical reflexes once were? Got your own theory? We’d love to hear it.
