This is so so so so so incredible. Read it a couple of times.

The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid.

Aoccdrnig to a rsercheear 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.

Amzanig huh?

Robby (imported) wrote: Wed Sep 17, 2003 2:03 pm This is so so so so so incredible. Read it a couple of times.

The paomnnehil pweor of the hmuan mnid.

Aoccdrnig to a rsercheear 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.

Amzanig huh?

Das Phenomän des menschlichen Gehirns.

Ich muss scohn saegn Robby, es stimtm. Egal in welche Reienfolge man die Buchstaben eines Wortes setzt, so ist man denoch in der Lage Sie zu verstehen. Obwhol wnen dei Buchtsaben in vollkomemne unordunng snid wrid es zuenhmned sriegirhecw bsi uihlcnömg nhco ennie snni zu enreknn.

Esrtaunlcih.

I wonder what this will do to Hooked on Phonics.

Huwkt on foniks didunt doo much guwd heer; wee trid it.http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/images/smilies/help.gif

I know an 11 yo. named Lee who still puts 3 - e's in his own name.http://www.eunuch.org/Public/Images/ea1/E9.gif

An Onymus (imported) wrote: Thu Sep 18, 2003 1:54 am I wonder what this will do to Hooked on Phonics.

Actually, I'd be surprised if it worked for dyslexics. The problem is that while the mind can be trained to impose patterns on mixed up words, it really isn't an inherent trait. Writing, after all, has only existed for the past 6000 years or so.

Some people can pick up the knack very quickly, but others do require early phonics training, lest they end up dyslexic. Tom Cruise, for instance, was a terrible reader at one time, but taught his brain thru use a form of phonics training how to translate the patterns. With much practice, it becomes automatic, as the example shows. (By the way, the "whole word" reading method taught in the U.S. for the past 50 years has actually proven a miserable failure, if one compares illiteracy rates before and after the switch.)

All that having been said, the ability of most people to read that passage does illustrate just how marvelously adaptable the human brain is.

Ahh yes, yet another example of researchers going out and 'proving' something that anyone that has ever used IRC could tell them.

The "whole word" method must work for quite a few people, because that's essentially the way Chinese characters are read. Also Egyptian hieroglyphics. Of course, the method of teaching Chinese characters has probably been refined over the 4000 years or so that they have been used.

It is not quite that simple,

Generally, in any text you can remove every 5th word completely and still be able to read and comprehend the meaning of the text.

Usually, if a child cannot read by the 2nd grade, they put that child in special education and teach them phonics.

It is a very complicated area, but whole word reading does not work at all if you have never seen the word before.

A-1

A-1 (imported) wrote: Sat Sep 27, 2003 2:26 pm Generally, in any text you can remove every 5th word completely and still be able to read and comprehend the meaning of the text.

Ohhh, you mean like half of the stories submitted to the Archive, then?!

Paolo wrote: Thu Sep 18, 2003 5:03 am http://www.eunuch.org/Public/Images/ea1/E

8.gif

An Onymus (imported) wrote: Tue Sep 23, 2003 3:43 am The "whole word" method must work for quite a few people, because that's essentially the way Chinese characters are read. Also Egyptian hieroglyphics. Of course, the method of teaching Chinese characters has probably been refined over the 4000 years or so that they have been used.

There was an article on this in, I think, Wired magazine recently. (Don't hold me to that. It could be a different mag. I read it in the doctor's office.) In it, they noted that the human brain does not naturally associate symbols with sounds. The process of reading involves the use of two different areas of the brain, which, once trained, work in concert to perform this complex task. But the process of learning to read requires that the fledgling reader invoke a third portion of the brain, which performs a crucial initial stage of the interpretation, until the next area has been properly trained to do it instead.

That training is barely necessary for some people, extremely helpful to others, and absolutely crucial to a significant percentage of people. More importantly, phonics training is helpful on some level to everyone in this process. It's one reason why illiteracy rates in the U.S. have increased dramatically since the abandonment of phonics and the adoption of "whole word " teaching techniques.

I don't believe that Chinese symbolic writing uses the same combination of brain functions to read. Reading those characters would seem to be much the same as learning to distinguish a picture of an apple from that of a house -- a far different and less analytically complex task than learning to associate letters with sounds, assembling the sounds into words, and then associating the words with objects. The complexity of Chinese writing lies in the sheer number of symbols that must be memorized. Besides, we can't legitimately evaluate how effective that system is, because the Chinese have yet to compile any reliable literacy figures with which to compare.

Egyptian hieroglyphics were not actually symbols representing words, but symbols representing sounds, just like our own alphabet. Carl Sagan did a bit on the Rosetta Stone explaining this in his Cosmos series. While I suspect the Egyptians had much the same problem as we, it likely wasn't an issue for them, since not being able to read in those days simply meant that one couldn't become a scribe. You seem to be assuming that because they used that system of writing for some time, it somehow must have worked well for everyone. But how do you know? Aren't you leaping to a conclusion?