Can you read this? Scientists have revealed why you can read scrambled words so easily, offering a quirky insight into how our brains function. This effect, often called 'typoglycemia', is commonly accompanied by the 'rule' that as long as the first and last letters of a word are in the right place, the order of the middle letters doesn't matter.
The Myth of First and Last Letters
But this explanation is misleading, argues Karen Stollznow, a research fellow of linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder. 'Reading scrambled words has much less to do with a magical rule about first and last letters, and much more to do with how our brains use context, pattern recognition and prediction,' she wrote on The Conversation. 'When we read, we typically don't painstakingly process each letter in sequence. Instead, skilled readers recognise words rapidly by drawing on multiple cues at once.'
How Our Brains Process Text
When we read, our brains factor in familiar letter patterns, the overall shape of the word and the context of the sentence. Dr Stollznow explained that our brains are constantly predicting what is likely to come next and then checking those predictions against what we see. 'This is why we often miss typos in our own writing. We don't see what's actually on the page, we see what we expect to be there,' she said. This means that even when the letters are out of order, enough of the structure of a word remains for the brain to make an educated guess.
Limits of Scrambled Reading
However, there are some words that are much harder to process than others. Words that are short have a limit on how many possible combinations the letters could form, Dr Stollznow said. Function words like 'the', 'and' and 'is' are usually kept the same, which help provide the grammatical scaffolding of the sentence. A passage that is highly predictable will also be easier to read, as your brain fills in the gaps automatically. The issue arises with longer words that have extreme rearrangements – for example 'psgkntiaianly', which is an anagram of 'painstakingly'. This famous phrase captured the monumental significance of the first human landing on the Moon on July 20, 1969.
The Role of Context
'The key to understanding this phenomenon is context,' Dr Stollznow explained. 'Words are not processed in isolation. Each word is interpreted in relation to the others around it, and within a broader framework of meaning. This allows us to compensate for missing or distorted information.' However, there are limits, she added: 'As scrambling becomes more extreme, or as words become less predictable, comprehension quickly breaks down. Reading speed also slows noticeably, even when we can still make sense of the text.'
Computers and Scrambled Words
Computers are now able to unscramble words with remarkable accuracy by analysing patterns and probabilities across huge sets of data. In this sense, machines and humans rely on similar principles, she said. 'Yes, we can often read scrambled words. But not because the order of letters doesn't matter. It's because our brains are remarkably good at making sense of imperfect information. So good, in fact, that they can turn a mess into meaning,' she concluded.
Related Research
Separate research, published in 2011, found that when something is obscured from or unclear to the eye, human minds can predict what they think they're going to see and fill in the blanks. 'Effectively, our brains construct an incredibly complex jigsaw puzzle using any pieces it can get access to,' explained researcher Fraser Smith. 'These are provided by the context in which we see them, our memories and our other senses.' Dr Lars Muckli, who also worked on the study, said: 'When direct input from the eye is obstructed, the brain still predicts what is likely to be present behind the object by using some of the other inputs to come up with best guesses.'
