An interesting post about reading came across my desk this morning from Edgar Owen. Try this out:
fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too
Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can. i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! –Egadr
Okay, I read this maybe a bit slower than if the words were spelled correctly, but it was really easy. Who are the 45 people out of 100 who can’t do this? Does this work for high frequency words but not low frequency words? I’m going to have to check this out. Edgar didn’t provide a reference, but I’ll look for it.
2 Comments
Rick · July 9, 2008 at 5:01 pm
http://www.snopes.com/language/apocryph/cambridge.asp
Laura Freberg · July 10, 2008 at 8:07 am
Ouch….so it looks like this was not so newsworthy after all! I suppose there’s a psychology principle in there somewhere, as I trusted an otherwise credible (to me) source….
As you know, I usually manage to reference most of my posts, and perhaps I should make that a “must” rather than a “should.” Thanks for the heads up, and hope your summer is going great!
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