"I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. To the phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseaethe huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe."
The text above is from an e-mail that went viral after its 2003 debut thanks to social media platforms spreading the phenomenon worldwide. Dubbed as Typoglycemia, the phenomenon claims that the only thing that matters in word recognition is the first and last letter of the word because the human mind reads words as a whole. How true is this claim?
Dr. Anne Sutter from Loyola University Chicago was a guest speaker for our Neuroscience Seminar course, and to prepare for her talk we were given two journals to read. The one that struck me as particularly fascinating was “Reading, Sublexical Units and Scrambled Words: Capturing the Human Data” by R. C Shillcock because it utilized the viral Typoglycemia e-mail as stepping stone in understanding the role of letter orders in reading. Shillcock begins the journal by noting that the identity of the language is a crucial component of this phenomenon because some languages are non-alphabetic, such as Chinese. He then goes on to saying that in English, the first thing that the brain needs to do to recognize a word such as ORCHESTRA is to distinguish said word from approximately 50,000+ other words a reader knows. In addition to that, he notes that, “some info about the order of letters is necessary to distinguish it from CARTHORSE”. So how exactly would the brain differentiate ORCHESTRA from CARTHORSE? Well, Shillcock claims that CARTHORSE can be distinguished by knowing where the letters of the word fall. By knowing that the letters A, R, C, and T fall in the first half of the word, and that the letters R, H, O, S, and E fall in the second half, we can differentiate between the two words without requiring the precise order of these letters. This of course works with longer words, about 5% of four-lettered words remain ambiguous (Shillcock, 2004).
Later on in the journal, Shillcock introduces the idea of the split fovea theory. The fovea is a small pit comprised of tightly packed cones in the center of the retina, and is responsible for visual sharp vision which is important for activities like reading. The split fovea theory claims that when our eyes are “fixated within a written word, visual information about the letters falling to the left of fixation is projected initially to the right cerebral hemisphere while visual information about the letters falling to the right of fixation is projected to the left cerebral hemisphere.” (Ellis, 2010). The reason he introduced that theory is because it ties in with knowing where certain letters of a word fall. So again, if in CARTHORSE letters A, R, C, and T fall in the first half of the word, and letters R, H, O, S, and E fall in the second half, and if our eyes are fixated near center of the word, it becomes clear as to how the brain can recognize the overall word despite it not being spelled correctly. Each of those respective letters go to their designated area of the brain, making it somewhat of a cheat-sheet for word recognition. So in a sense, yes, the opening text from the e-mail is correct in saying that we can recognize a scrambled word as long as the first and last letter is held constant. However, it grossly oversimplifies the process of word recognition. While we do not necessarily fixate on each letter of the word, our brain has mechanisms that help create shortcuts toward recognition by recognizing letter patterns.
So our brain can make out jumbled words, but how does comprehension come into play? While looking for additional information on Typoglycemia I stumbled across an essay, “The Brain The Frontal Lobe English Language Essay”, which focused on the phenomenon and comprehension ability. The essay introduced three sections of the cerebral cortex that are related to reading: the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and the supramarginal gyrus. According to the author, each plays a distinct role in reading comprehension. The frontal lobe acts as a filter; comprehension is made possible by this lobe through its organization of a language’s information and grammar. The temporal lobe is responsible for memory, and in terms of reading comprehension it is essential for processing written words into meaningful information. The supramarginal gyrus is part of the parietal lobe. and it is “perhaps the most important reading area of the mind”. It acts as a reading integrator by linking parts of the brain together, and connecting many areas related to reading. (“The Brain, The Frontal Lobe”, 2013)
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| For those who are unfamiliar with the brain's structure: the frontal lobe is the front portion that includes Broca's area, the temporal lobe is the one beneath the large horizontal "line" (lateral sulcus) in the brain, and the Supramarginal gyrus is pinpointed above. |
A point that both Shillcock and this author make is noting that each word has a certain shape to it and that the shape is essential in identifying the word. This author took it further by explaining that each “letter in the English language can be characterized as ascending, like the letters b and l, descending, like the letters p and y, or neutral, like letters n and a.” Thus, the word PATH has a pattern that goes like this; descending (p), neutral (a), ascending (t), ascending (h). (“The Brain, The Frontal Lobe”, 2013). As a result, when the letters are scrambled the word becomes less identifiable because the pattern itself is all jumbled up.
Comprehension is no simple task, even though our brain seems to do it automatically. A reader must begin by knowing how to identify letters, then words, then understand how words fit in a sentence grammatically, and then finally comprehending the text and its ideas by being able to make connections. The author claims that one important element to comprehension is schemas, which are representations of “inferences about the world”. An example from the essay on schemas is that if a person were in Mexico and saw a large red truck with sirens driving swiftly down the street, they would know to pull over for that truck even if it said camión de bomberos instead of fire truck. (“The Brain, The Frontal Lobe”, 2013). The essay emphasizes that our brain uses schemas for reading as well, utilizing two different pathways depending on whether the word we encounter is familiar or not. If the word has been encountered before, it goes to a direct and efficient pathway. However, if we encounter an unfamiliar word it goes to a second pathway that works on decoding the sound of the word. This pathway is slower than the first because it takes a few moments of conscious effort. (“The Brain, The Frontal Lobe”, 2013).
Based on the functions of the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and the supramarginal gyrus, along with word patterns and schemas, the author concludes that comprehension will be hampered by jumbled up words. It makes sense considering that the three areas of the brain (the frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and the supramarginal gyrus) are each responsible for distinct parts of reading; when a scrambled word is introduced it forces each area to slow down and make sense of it before it can go onto comprehending the overall sentence or word meaning. The same goes for word patterns, the brain will spend more time on sorting out the pattern before being able to focus on comprehension. It is also a given that for schemas the scrambled words would be sent down the second pathway, slowing down comprehension efficiency. (“The Brain, The Frontal Lobe”, 2013)
Going back to the original e-mail text, I will summarize the basic points covered in this post. Yes, the brain can identify words that are scrambled, however it is not as cut and dry as “the brain reads words as a whole”. Certain letters in a word fall in certain halves of the word, and since the split-fovea sends each half to their respective cerebral hemispheres it becomes somewhat of a shortcut to identifying the word (meaning that letter orders are still somewhat involved). Also on the topic of letter orders, each letter has a respective pattern (ascending, neutral, or descending) which givens words their own specialized pattern that is essential in word recognition. So while our brains do not “read” every letter, each letter plays a role in a more microscopic phenomenon. The words used in the e-mail were words many English speaking people recognize. However, if we scrambled up very long words such as hopumoptipas, sicraoiulegs, nineocterusist, it would take longer to decode (any guesses as to what these words are?). In addition to that, recognition does not always equate to comprehension. It is still a pretty cool phenomenon! It will be interesting to see how the split-fovea theory and Typoglycemia can be used in furthering our understanding of how the brain processes words and reading. I’m particularly excited to see if they can be used to better understand dyslexia, a learning disorder that approximately 1 in 10 people have (Austin Learning Solutions).
Works Cited:
Dyslexia Facts and Statistics. (n.d.). Retrieved May 04, 2016, from http://www.austinlearningsolutions.com/blog/38-dyslexia-facts-and-statistics.html
Ellis, A. W., & Brysbaert, M. (2010). Split fovea theory and the role of the two cerebral hemispheres in reading: A review of the evidence. Neuropsychologia, 48(2), 353-365. doi:10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2009.08.021
Essays, UK. (November 2013). The Brain The Frontal Lobe English Language. Retrieved from https://www.ukessays.com/essays/english-language/the-brain-the-frontal-lobe-english-language-essay.php?cref=1
Shillcock, R., & Monaghan, P. (2004). Reading, Sublexical Units And Scrambled Words: Capturing The Human Data. Connectionist Models of Cognition and Perception II. doi:10.1142/9789812702784_0023
Images:
Tactics for People
Studying [Digital image]. (2013, August). Retrieved from http://www.gotmesh.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tactics-for-people-studying-English-brain-with-letters.jpg
The Brain [Digital
image]. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://thebrain.mcgill.ca/flash/a/a_10/a_10_cr/a_10_cr_lan/a_10_cr_lan.html
Waters, G. (n.d.).
Dyslexia [Digital image]. Retrieved from Dyslexia [Digital image]. (n.d.).
Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cognitive-neuroscience-society/using-neuroscience-to-bre_b_6390814.html
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