At lunch today someone brought up a meme that I had heard of before, but I began to wonder about its validity. The general idea is that people can read words with jumbled letters as long as the first and last letter are in the correct order. The following paragraph is used as an example.
Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde 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 are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
It seems cool at first and I still believe it shows the power of our minds, but it’s not entirely on the up-and-up. I found a response to the e-mail from a linguist who works at Cambridge University who points out that no such study took place in Cambridge. This is what he had to say about it.
“I work at Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, in Cambridge, UK, a Medical Research Council unit that includes a large group investigating how the brain processes language. If there’s a new piece of research on reading that’s been conducted in Cambridge, I thought I should have heard of it before…
I’ve written this page, to try to explain the science behind this meme. There are elements of truth in this, but also some things which scientists studying the psychology of language (psycholinguists) know to be incorrect. I’m going to break down the meme, one line at a time to illustrate these points, pointing out what I think is the relevant research on the role of letter order on reading. Again, this is only my view of the current state of reading research, as it relates to this meme. If you think I’ve missed something important, let me know.”
I also found a forum discussing the meme using different text. A user by the name of bobkalsey wrote a rather lengthy response, dubbing it ‘Webbage’ (Web Garbage).
In the end, I think it’s safe to say that not all sentences would be so easy to read, so it’s generous to say our minds only need the first and last letter, but in many cases it is surprising what our mind can make out of a jumble of letters.
bobkalsey’s response sums up my feelings on the subject.
He wrote, “I know it wasn’t mean to be serious…and I don’t mean to sound like a fuddy-duddy. It is an amusing post. But…I guess I [am] a fuddy-duddy — how else [would you] explain my frequent skepticism and…obsession to get the facts right[?]“
I think it’s not the first or the last letter, vowels must be in order to read it well.
» Comment by Juan on January 28, 2005 @ 5:10 amTo be honest, I’m a bit disappointed now that I know. It’s similar to how you feel when someone shows you how a magic trick is performed. I’m not saying that I like being conned or duped, but not knowing the truth makes life more interesting.
» Comment by jason on January 28, 2005 @ 9:38 amActually, this feature of the brain’s language processing centers is already known by people fluent in ASL. Unlike beginning signers, those who are fluent spell extremely rapidly. This often results in the letters getting misformed and even jumbled, and yet the also-fluent reader can generally figure out the correct word quickly. I don’t know the science behind it, but it cerainly seems to work on the same principles as this meme.
» Comment by Meredith on January 28, 2005 @ 2:05 pmOh, and am I the only one who has noticed the missing letter in this?
» Comment by Meredith on January 28, 2005 @ 2:08 pmMeredith: What ‘this’ are you referring to? The jumbled on that is the first word in the last sentence of the paragraph is ‘Tihs’, but there aren’t any letters missing.
» Comment by dan on January 28, 2005 @ 2:41 pmVery unscientifically, I have heard that reading becomes more recognizing whole words at once, rather than individual letters, which makes sense, because we don’t look at each letter and sound out each word every time, but gain some proficiency in recognizing the complete unit. But anecdotally, for me personally, that jumbled paragraph didn’t prove to me anything revolutionary, but was more like a little exercise or puzzle, to figure out the words, which I guess most people can do fairly well. And if any spots were the most important, I would guess/agree that if we were assured that the first and last letters are correctly placed, that helps a lot. To test the hypothesis, maybe we could put all the other letters in their correct places, and switch the first and last, and see if we all get confused and can’t read the words at all … (I was gonna do that here, but started, and the effort seems more trouble than what I think our reaction would be, that the mind can adapt pretty well once we understand the rules, so we’d be able to figure it out and understand the words.)
» Comment by DavidH on January 28, 2005 @ 11:13 pmIt almost seems like a lesson in cryptology with all the code breaking and spy stuff. It is a very intensely satisfying field indeed.
» Comment by fareed on January 29, 2005 @ 5:31 pmDan: Nearly every version of this I have seen contains the phrase a rscheearch - the ones without it have simply dropped the “a” to make it “correct.” This page caught the error.
» Comment by Meredith on January 31, 2005 @ 7:13 amI have been trying for two weeks to make a word from these letters:
S C H A A L P
Can you please help so I can get on with my game?
» Comment by jack saliamonas on February 10, 2005 @ 8:05 amJack: The Internet Anagram Server came up with only one word: paschal, an archaic word for Easter.
» Comment by dan on February 10, 2005 @ 9:33 amOur names are Dakota (female) and Whitey (male).
» Comment by Dakota and Whitey on January 12, 2006 @ 5:41 pmWe are 13 and we are g oing to do a project on this because it seems so interesting. we are g o ing to do a survey on our school to see how many people can read the paragraph that we jumble up! we will tell you if we place in the science fair becaus that is what we are in and we are gonna kick some butt!!
I’d be interested in your results as I am doing a similar project.
» Comment by Teresa on February 7, 2006 @ 7:37 pmmy friends and me are also doing a project similar to the above but we are time the lenght it takes to read it and seeing if spelling ability or the lack of is linked, please reply if you have done a sucessful science fair project using this theme.
» Comment by Rachel on June 6, 2006 @ 1:15 pmI think it’s very smart and clever what you did and that I would of never thought of that. And some people think spelling is important. Now I don’t so I can write any thing and people would still know what I am writing
» Comment by courtenay on June 27, 2006 @ 9:22 pmYes, people will be able to read your writing even with bad spelling. Whether they think it’s worth the effort and what they think of your mental ability is another matter. I know if I had to choose between hiring 2 people and couldn’t find any useful difference in their applications, but 1 spelled horribly, well, take a guess…
» Comment by Jerry on August 15, 2006 @ 1:25 pmI’ve just completed a literature review as part of my psychology degree about this letter transposition stuff. I don’t know how much anyone knows about it, but I thought a little summary maybe useful. The main literature demonstrates:
» Comment by Tracey on January 16, 2007 @ 10:11 amThere is a significant delay to reading rate when any type of transposition is made.
The first and last letters of words are more important than the internal, i.e. it is easier to read a word when the internal letters have been moved around, than when external letters have been transposed.
Nonadjacent transposition can be made and it is still possible to read the word.
Tranposing vowels is more damaging to reading than consanants.
The implication is therefore that when we read a word, the brain recognises the letters first, but then organises them into their spaces later. Hopefully, for anyone doing a project that may help a little.
Tcreay: I’m still skeptical about the reality of this supposed discovery, but tnkahs for piivdonrg yuor smarmuy.
» Comment by dan on January 16, 2007 @ 12:44 pmA friend of ours has told us to keep 2/22/07 open as we are going somewhere. They said that they would drive. They also gave us a jumble of words(NCKNANKAOAN); our clue–it is a city somewhere in the world but has something to do with what we will be doing on the 22nd within an hour of Huddleston, VA. The first letter is a K. Is there somewhere I can go to help fgurie out this jumble?
» Comment by dave stone on January 30, 2007 @ 7:50 amThe anagram server is a good resource, but in this case the only solution it came up with was Knack an anon, which seems pretty useless.
» Comment by dan on January 30, 2007 @ 9:40 amI am trying to help my son make 5 words out of these jumbled letters one-7 letter word, one -8 letter word, one-9 letter word and one- 10 letter word. then one extra word. letter are noinectnst. any suggestions would be appreciated.
» Comment by Janet on September 10, 2007 @ 3:19 pmthanks,
janet
See comment #19.
10-letters: Continents
» Comment by dan on September 10, 2007 @ 3:22 pm9-letters: Continent
8-letters: Contents
7-letters: Intents
“the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht……”
» Comment by Sarah on June 4, 2008 @ 9:58 amIMPORTANT is spelled with an E instead of an A.
Hmm… wonder who wrote that?
Sarah has a point.
It should be importAnt (not imprortEnt)
There’s a surplus letter h in research (rscheearch)
Also the grammar is terrible:
According to A research -> according to research
…be at the right place -> are in the right place
So it really does show the power of the human mind, or that I’m a bit pedantic.
» Comment by Billy on November 7, 2008 @ 6:39 am@Billy: Thanks for the corrections (and to Sarah too). I hadn’t noticed them.
» Comment by Dan on November 7, 2008 @ 7:15 amis there a book written like that? there should be it’s actually a really fun way to read! are ther other things written like that?
» Comment by Sarah on November 19, 2008 @ 3:56 pm@Sarah I doubt it. No editor in their right mind would want to proofread it. Imagine spell checking it!
» Comment by Dan on November 19, 2008 @ 4:06 pm