Inetrsteinig

Very interesting! Reminds me of text messaging (or should I say txt mssging) In modern life we are having to 'fill in the gaps' more often. Somehow we get the over all meaning even though the individual parts of the message are inaccurate/unclear. The right hemisphere deals with pattern recognition whilst the left deals more with sequences and logical progression. If someone has a certain type of brain damage to the right side then quite often everything needs to be 'spelled out' to that person as overall pattern recognition is impaired. Pattern recognition failure also produces an inability to appreciate sarcasm and metaphow both of which are pattern based rather than logical representaions of reality.

The brain completes the picture and interprets reality (interpretaion is the key-as we can interpret in ways which damage us-depression, anxiety conditions etc.)

Magicians and 'mental illusionists' work by this principle of 'filling in the gaps' and assuming one has seen/not seen something when one has/has not. I often say 'Hiya' to people on the phone which somehow translates in their mind to 'How are you?' to which they either actually tell me how they are producing a very long call or reply with the traditional 'fine and how are you?' I think it is a leap forward in individual maturity when we become aware that our perceptions, beliefs and reactions are a 'take' on reality and not necessarily a reflection of reality. When we undersatnd this we can begin to challenge damaging beliefs and limiting ideas. This is why we often say that depressed people and people with low self-esteem are actually very sure of themselves as they are sure their damaging perceptions of and about themselves are accurate reflections of how things really are. I think an effective therapist will need to begin to get someone less sure that they are inadequete, doomed, etc.

Any way that's all for.......

Great minds...

http://www.uncommonforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=56

Looks like Joe beat you to it Ant

From the Guardian 25th September

The ease might be illusory. Or even ilosruly. Never mind what the web loggers tell you, scrambled words can be hard to read.

Not so, says Martin Turner of the Dyslexia Institute. "There is a spectrum of truth here, and that is towards the lower end, because actually sequence is about the only thing that is important."

Experiments with so-called format distortion can change the appearance of a word drastically - alternating letters in capitals, lower case, superscript and subscript, for instance, or in a huge Gothic typeface to disguise the lettering - but in experiments young children can still read such disguised words, says Turner. What throws them is a change in the sequence of letters, hardly surprising because letters represent a flow of speech sound. The first letter is an important clue to a scrambled word, the last much less so.

In fact, the exact way in which the letters are scrambled can be extremely significant. For example, with plurals, leaving the "s" at the end, but not the letter that should have preceded it, can make the word hard to decipher.
"All you need to do is try and read that email," says Turner. "Immediately, you discover it is quite difficult to read. And secondly, you get very fed up with it after two or three sentences. What you have done is put yourself in the position of a dyslexic or poor reader, who loses interest jolly quickly.
"Motivation slumps and it is quite an aversive experience. I got that email, from a fellow psychologist, needless to say, and immediately wrote back commenting that it was hard work, and aversive. After a while, I thought: do I really want to do this? Why don't I look out the window and see what is going on?"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/thisweek/story/0,12977,1048638,00.html

Simon

Muddled letters may be decipherable, but can you understand this question:

Hough dou peapel rede gnew wirdz?

Not quite as easy is it - we obviously look at patterns more than actually reading phonetically.

Andy.

Heh, heh, nice one andy. And my favourite...

What word is this?

Ghoti



Roger

F (gh as in cough)

I (o as in carbon)

SH (ti as in mention)

Kathleen

Brilliant Kathleen - not many people get that - except that I usually use the 'o' from women

Roger