Typoglycemia

Typoglycemia is a neologism for a purported recent discovery about the cognitive processes behind reading written text. The word appears to be a portmanteau of "typo", as in typographical error, and "hypoglycemia". It is an urban legend/Internet meme that appears to have an element of truth to it.[1] No such research was carried out at the University of Cambridge.[1]

An example of this text, as circulated in September 2003, reads as follows:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.[1]

A few mistakes were made:

  • The word "researcher" looked like "researchch" was scrambled, with "er" being replaced with "ch";
  • The word "important" looked like "importent", a misspelling of the word, was scrambled.

These emails may have been inspired by a letter to New Scientist in 1999[2] from Graham Rawlinson of the University of Nottingham in which he discusses his 1976 Ph.D. thesis[3] or perhaps by the research of Thomas R. Jordan's group on the relative influences of the exterior and interior letters of words.[4]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Davis, Matt (2012). "Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. [...]". MRC: Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit. Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge University. Retrieved 2016-07-04.
  2. ↑ Rawlinson, Graham (29 May 1999). "Reibadailty". New Scientist (2188). Retrieved 4 July 2016.
  3. ↑ Rawlinson, G.E. (1976). The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition (Ph.D.). Psychology Department, University of Nottingham, Nottingham UK (unpublished). (Cited in Davis 2012)
  4. ↑ Massaro, Dominic; Jesse, Alexandra (17 March 2005), "The Magic of Reading: Too Many Influences for Quick and Easy Explanations", in Trabasso, Thomas R.; Sabatini, John P.; Massaro, Dominic W.; Calfee, Robert, From Orthography to Pedagogy: Essays in Honor of Richard L. Venezky, p. 42, ISBN 978-0805850895
  • Rawlinson, Graham (2012). Davis, Matt, ed. "The Significance of Letter Position in Word Recognition [...] A Summary". MRC - Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit - People. Retrieved 2016-07-04.
  • Abstract of Graham Rawlinson's Thesis in Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, IEEE, Jan 2007
  • Jordan, T.R. (1990). Presenting words without interior letters: Superiority over single letters and influence of postmask boundaries. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 16, 893-909.
  • Mandell, Judy (2017). "Chunking: The Brain’s Shortcut to Understanding and Recalling Information," March 2017, Observer.com.
  • Online typoglycemia generator.
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