Sometimes when I read, I notice that I will say the
next word in a sentence without even looking at the entire word but a few
letters that I see in the word. Sometimes I will guess the right word, and
other times I will guess wrong. Then I always wonder what made me read out the right
or wrong word in the first place, instead of looking at the entire word to
begin with.
I selected this image because it offers another
example of how the mind takes in information and deciphers through the
information in order to make connections about what the words are trying to
convey. In the first box above, all of the letters in the words, with the exception of
the first and last letters, are scrambled up. However, it is still possible to
read what the paragraph says. This not only shows that we do not see things as
they really are, but also supports the idea that when it comes to learning, the
brain has to be able to make suitable connections and interpretations between
what some idea or object appears to be and what it actually is.
James (1962) stated, “when we listen to a person
speaking or read a page of print, much of what we think we see or hear is
supplied from our memory” (p.78). Furthermore, Pinker (2002) acknowledges the
influence that past experiences have on individuals’ perceptions of things
(e.g. words). Therefore, when new information is encountered, individuals draw
on old knowledge that is stored in their memory in order to make sense of the
new material. Despite the jumbled words, it is possible to make sense of this
paragraph because of the brain’s ability to recognize familiar patterns of the
words that have been encountered previously and signal individuals to verbalize
the correct word from memory.
Tia,
ReplyDeleteI really liked your example. I have also seen that first example where the letters are all mixed up except the first and the last letter, but we are still able to understand it. I thought this related to the PPT that discussed dyslexia and how hard it is for students to read because they do not have this immediate recognition, and take longer to process the words.
Yes,that's a good connection! The activity on that slide was tough, but very interesting. It gave me a better understanding of the difficulties dyslexic individuals go through when trying to read and comprehend words. Dyslexia goes deeper than individuals pronouncing words backwards(a factor which too many people focus on). It's about how they perceive the word(s) in front of them.
ReplyDeleteI do that too, Tia. I think my brain gets excited sometimes and goes faster than I want it to, which I think is why a lot of times I have to re-read something over and over before I remember what I was reading. I don't know much about dyslexia specifically, but it's got to be frustrating to perceive words differently and then have to focus on un-scrambling it.
ReplyDeleteSo interesting that you posted about this. Just today I was at work writing a letter home to parents about a party we're having and I kept adding an 'e' to both to make it bothe because my hand/mind automatically wanted to add an e after a th because I'm sure one of my most commonly used words is 'the.' A lot of my girls made fun of me for it but added that they do that a lot, too! Sometimes our brains overuse patterns to our spelling detriment!
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