Try To Read This
Read this aloud…
I cdnuolt bivelee taht I cluod aulacity uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid. Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer ni waht oredr the Itteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and Isat Itteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey Iteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?
Yaeh and I awlyas thought slpeling was ipmorantt!
Mind blown?
The reason you can read this so easily is because your eyes don’t start with the first word, look at the character, move right until is sees a space, then determines that must be a word, then looks for “st”, or “th”, or “ou”, or “tt”, or other consonant pairs, then analyzes vowel pairs, then match it up to “when tow vowels go walking the first one does the talking”, “a”, “i”, “o”, “u”, sometimes “y” and “w”, except the second month alone to which we assign 29, gathers no moss… Yikes! It would take a week to read this last paragraph.
No, the brain does separate words by space, quickly, then looks at the first and last character only. It estimates the overall size of the word, matches that pattern with words it had read previously, then guesses what the word is. If it fits in context, then it knows it guessed correctly. If it doesn’t fit, the brain pulls up the next best visual match.
Lon Safko
Serial Innovator, Keynote Speaker, Trainer, Innovative Thinking
Tags: innovative thinking, creative, creative thinking, Innovation, critical thinking definition, innovation definition, critical thinking skills, creative process
