Jaa

Word jumble hoax debunked

  • Artikkeli

I’ve previously talked about the Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy hoax. The study described in that hoax has recently been carried out by a team at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and the University of Durham. The data conclusively demonstrates that the hoax is incorrect.

The hoax claimed that transposing letters within a word did not slow reading performance because we recognize words as whole shapes. The team led by Keith Rayner found that all kinds of letter transpositions slow reading speed. Transposing internal letters as shown in the original hoax resulted in a reading speed decline from 255 words per minute (wpm) to 227 words per minute. Performance was worse if the transposition included the beginning or final letters of a word.

Example Sentence

Reading Speed

Normal

The boy could not solve the problem so he asked for help.

255 wpm

Internal letters

The boy cuold not slove the probelm so he aksed for help.

227 wpm

Final letters

The boy coudl not solev the problme so he askde for help.

189 wpm

Beginning letters

The boy oculd not oslve the rpoblem so he saked for help.

163 wpm

Additionally this study examined readers’ eye movements while reading these different conditions. They found that readers needed to spend more time fixating on words in the transposition conditions and made more regressive saccades.

This study only looked at letter transpositions of a single position, like the kinds used in the original hoax. I can only speculate how dramatically reading speed would be hurt with more dramatic transpositions like:

The boy cluod not svloe the pelborm so he aeksd for help.

Hopefully this study puts the hoax to rest. This and many other studies have made it clear that we don’t recognize words by whole shapes, but use letter information to recognize words.

Cheers, Kevin Larson

Rayner, K., White, S., Johnson, R., Liversedge, S. (2006). Raeding Wrods With Jubmled Lettres; There Is a Cost. Psychological Science 17(3), 192-193.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 09, 2006
    I think it's quite interesting that, although reading speed is diminished with internal rearrangement, it's possibly not diminished by as much as you might expect.

  • Anonymous
    May 10, 2006
    This reminds me of my first car, an old Volkswagen Beatle. Its top speed on open road was 72 miles per hour (116 kilometers per hour). When its top speed suddenly decreased to 65 mph (105 kph), I knew that it was time to get a tune up.

    255 wpm is analogous to my car’s top speed, and a ten percent reduction in speed to 227 wpm is a strong indication that something has seriously gone wrong with the text.

    Cheers, Kevin

  • Anonymous
    June 09, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2006
    Jakob, why do you think we recognize word shapes?

    In this longer paper I cover the evidence in favor of parallel letter recogntiion over the word shape hypothesis.

    http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/WordRecognition.aspx

    Cheers, Kevin

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2007
    Our brain probably looks at both word shapes and letters and is also primed by context.  When you mix up the letters, it does some damage, and the brain has to work harder, but it can still figure it out.  It's still possible to read a jumbled sentence fluently. Did the "hoax" really assert that reading speed did not decrease at all?  It was my understanding that the conclusion was simply that we can read jumbled words, and pretty easily at that.  And that alone is pretty interesting!

  • Anonymous
    March 29, 2007
    I don't necessarily have an informed opinion on word shape vs. parallel letter recognition.  But I think I read once — in a typography book — that one reason to use all-caps sparingly is that word shapes become less distinctive and thus harder to read.  To some approximation, any all-caps word just looks like a RECTANGLE of some length.  Whereas in ‘rectangle’ the ascenders and descenders add distinction to the shape and make it faster to recognize.

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2007
    the "hoaxer" is you matey and the only thing to be "debunked" should be this blog. of course its fascinating that we can read "jumbled up" words - its TURLY AZAMNIG in fact. What a dour individual with no life you must be.

  • Anonymous
    October 07, 2007
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 23, 2008
    hi, can you please tell me what the word "pmcnoay" is unjumbled, thank you.

  • Anonymous
    March 24, 2008
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 15, 2008
    PingBack from http://mekkablue.com/blog/?p=723

  • Anonymous
    December 04, 2008
    The email that was forwarded to me only mentions whether you CAN read the jumbled words.  To me another factor is that people expect certain words to come after others.  Since the email I got started out with "if you can read the following paragraph" whoever is trying to read it already knows it's somewhat of a challenge.  To me since none of the words are difficult or tricky then whoever says they can't read it probably just doesn't want to take the time or try.  I dont think it has anything to do with the the mind seeing the shape of a word, and I definitely think it can slow down the reader even if it is slight.  :)

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2009
    re: hi, can you please tell me what the word "pmcnoay" is unjumbled, thank you. There are no words in the english language that start with P, end with Y, and contain each of those letters. Assuming you jumbled the entire word including the first and last letters, your unjumbled word is likely "company"

  • Anonymous
    March 15, 2009
    The vowels need to be in proper order

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    June 05, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 12, 2009
    I only noticed that the words 'Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde uinervtisy' were jumbled on the second reading, for what it is worth.

  • Anonymous
    December 12, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    December 29, 2009
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 15, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    January 30, 2010
    I think you mean slatenig your apple.

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2010
    hmm... well.. i dunno.. it just seems so interesting to me peeps.. i guess, there's something about it, that i can use for measuring language competency. try thinking about the cognitive processes related to reading these jumbled letters.. it might not matter to some.. but for researchers trying to figure out, what processes involves while reading them.. its really interesting! this then relates to language understanding.. the comprehension.. how your memory retrieve familiar words from the long term memory.. and what not.. well, i guess, its worth looking into.. anything is possible, and that's why research work exist... just my 1 cent thought.

  • Anonymous
    February 13, 2012
    I think this is very interesting, so I decided to a science fair project on it. Thank you for sharing this great Cambridge University catastrophe.

  • Anonymous
    December 05, 2013
    Recognition of the sentence's total locution pays no small part in the recognition of the individual words.  There is an contradictory process occurring in the absorption of the statement and words where the gist of the statement is accepted before the words are mentally 'verified' as being the ones necessary to construct the statement.  The processes are really quite interesting.