Sunday, August 28, 2005

reading research or brain research?

On 8/27/05, Carol wrote:


ALZHEIMER'S EYE TEST


Count every "F" in the following text:





FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE
SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTI
FIC STUDY COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...
(SEE BELOW)






HOW MANY ?




3?


WRONG, THERE ARE 6 -- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !


The reasoning behind is further down.




The brain cannot process "OF".

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!



Anyone who counts all 6 "F's" on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.





.......
Okay, I have seen something like this in my teaching reading classes, and i don't know about the whole "brain can't process the word OF" idea. I'm curious about what Milan, my brother-in-law psychologist thinks. I think it is more of a reading issue - we read over such small words because we know they are there and we don't even pay attention to them. I would also say that as we read we tend to pay more attention to the first letters of words, and this would account for skipping of the F in OF. And why did that test feel the need to split up the word 'scientific'? Was that just so we would be sure to see that F and therefore be 'proving' their point? Because if they had kept the word together, some people probably wouldn't have noticied it first-hand, and then we would see that this is indeed, a reading issue. However, I'm still open to hearing what the brain-ologists of the crowd have to say.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm no brainologist, so I don't know!! :) How you hanging in, Katie-kins?? I'm gonna have a layover in Atlanta for like thirty minutes on Thursday!! I will be thinking of you while I am so close!! Have a good week! Good luck with the singles ministry, that sounds really neat. Love ya!!
Kel

Anonymous said...

Hi Kate how are you?!! It was so much fun to get to see you in Atlanta, even for an hour, I think I'm finally nearing the end of the adjustment phase, adjusting back to being home and all. Good luck with starting up school and all, cool story about your car!!
Naomi

stano said...

haha, that's so ridiculous! :)
i counted 4 on the first try and i was concentrated!! later on i realised that the ones i missed out were those 2 first OFs!!! ;) funny but scary tho! ;)
glad you are doing fine!! :)
ttyl

Anonymous said...

Hey Kate, how are you? Hopefully i get to see you soon!!! Take care.
Love you and miss you
Miska