How we read words whose letters are jumbled up

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SUMMARY

Recent research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in the UK has revealed how the human brain decodes jumbled letters in words, demonstrating that only the first and last letters need to remain in place for comprehension. This phenomenon, often cited in discussions about reading difficulties such as dyslexia, shows that context plays a crucial role in understanding jumbled text. However, the findings indicate that this effect is limited to simple sentence structures and common words, as more complex words and sentences do not exhibit the same readability.

PREREQUISITES
  • Understanding of cognitive psychology principles related to reading.
  • Familiarity with dyslexia and its impact on reading comprehension.
  • Knowledge of linguistic structures and word formation.
  • Awareness of the role of context in language processing.
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  • Research the cognitive mechanisms involved in reading and word recognition.
  • Explore the implications of jumbled text readability for dyslexia interventions.
  • Investigate the limits of the jumbled letter phenomenon in complex sentence structures.
  • Study the effects of context on language processing and comprehension.
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Psychologists, educators, linguists, and anyone interested in cognitive science and reading comprehension strategies, particularly those working with individuals facing reading challenges.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130315074613.htm

Researchers in the UK have taken an important step towards understanding how the human brain 'decodes' letters on a page to read a word. The work, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), will help psychologists unravel the subtle thinking mechanisms involved in reading, and could provide solutions for helping people who find it difficult to read, for example in conditions such as dyslexia.

I think a similar finding was done by some research team in an East Coast university, right ?
 
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I don't remember where, but paragraphs exhibiting this phenomenon have been posted on PF before. In addition to jumbling the letters, there were also replacements of digits for letters, like 4 for a and 3 for e as in leet. Even so, the paragraphs were easily readable.
 
I remember that from this paragraph people used to post where the letters of the words were jumbled except the first and last letters, and you could read the whole thing. The claim was that you only needed the first and last letters to be the same and you could tell what the word was.
But they didn't mention that a lot of words are 3 letters, which don't change at all, and words with 4 letters were changed very little, which made the paragraph intelligible mainly because you knew the context of the longer words.
 
phinds said:
What is your question? Do you find it untrue? surprizing? needing clarifiaction? what?
THe UK team did contribute a lot to the research. I was a little surprised when the same idea was posted on sciencedaily.
 
The article is misleading. You only see the phenomenon for sentences with simple structure and using very common and unambiguous words. It doesn't work in general.
 
I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd what I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in what oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.
Can you read this?
 
Wikipedia says it's a myth.
 
SnapDragon said:
Wikipedia says it's a myth.

Maybe it's scale-dependent. I thought most of Wikipedia had been written using the same method, but at the sentence and paragraph level :devil:
 
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Jimmy Snyder said:
I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd what I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in what oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.
Can you read this?

I was so amazed when I could read this without even thinking about it! Tihs is just isn4ne! I am osberving this feonmenon for the fisrt time.
Th3 fin4L t35t w0u|_D pr0bably |3y b0t|-| c@hngi|\|g 7h3 0rd3r 4Nd r43pla$ing s0m3 le77erz wih7 n0mbre$ @|\|d wirrt7nk inorc3t w0r|)z .
 
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  • #12
PuckNorris said:
Th3 fin4L t35t w0u|_D pr0bably |3y b0t|-| c@hngi|\|g 7h3 0rd3r 4Nd r43pla$ing s0m3 le77erz wih7 n0mbre$ @|\|d wirrt7nk inorc3t w0r|)z .

The final test would probably be both changing the order and replacing some letters with numbers and writing incorrect words.
 
  • #13
SnapDragon said:
Wikipedia says it's a myth.
If that's true the post before you would show Wikipedia to be unreliable on this subject.
 
  • #14
I am unsure how this is not the exact same as simple recognition/patterns/ect, which of course are not myths.

How long has the "license plate" game been around for?

/kənˈspikyo͞oəs/ that is the pronunciation of conspicuous which of course is not

/ken'spish'uass/ and to me anyways is completely unrecognizable as the word Conspicuous.

I'd guess a paragraph spelled Phonetically would also get the message across...as would diagrams.

I sometimes typed up stuff for a sales rep of ours, he hand writes stuff and often is about farming & includes jargon. His hand writting is messy and sometimes I can't make out the words...or even guess what they maybe...I'm not not a farmer and the context eludes me.

Duobl porlor robt mlkr =? btw a google search of Duobl porlor robt mlkr pretty much figured it out. And I'd doubt is was much different from the way we do.
 
  • #15
My spelling is so bad it's not funny but if you jumble the letters up I can find all the words. I don't know how but I do.
 
  • #16
Jimmy Snyder said:
I cnduo't bvleiee taht I culod aulaclty uesdtannrd what I was rdnaieg. Unisg the icndeblire pweor of the hmuan mnid, aocdcrnig to rseecrah at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mttaer in what oderr the lterets in a wrod are, the olny irpoamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rhgit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whoutit a pboerlm. Tihs is bucseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey ltteer by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aaznmig, huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuot slelinpg was ipmorantt! See if yuor fdreins can raed tihs too.
Can you read this?


Oh I get it but it's really a trick and not a phenomenum
 
  • #17
Try making sense of isolated words...like 'bucseae'. By itself it is meaningless,, so you are getting a lot of info from context and word position.

Also for a limited subset (as in roadsigns) one can often tell the word from the overall shape of the word as a whole.
 

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