How Our Minds Read Jumbled Words: The Fascinating Power of the Human Brain

Hi Folks,

Something interesting which I would like to share.. Interesting

Subject: The power of the human mind

The phenomenal power of the human mind. According to a research at Cambridge University, it doesn't matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself, but the word as a whole. Amazing huh?

Regards

Hi,

Another one for the amazing brain.... Try this: Count every "F" in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS... HOW MANY?

There are 6 -- no joke. READ IT AGAIN!

Really, go back and try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down. The reasoning behind this is further down. The brain cannot process "OF". Incredible, isn't it? 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.

Regards,
Anuradha Zingade

Hi there,

Great stuff, Antony & Anuradha.

Some more inputs on the 'F' sentence... if I may add.

Why does this happen (our inability to spot the 'F' in 'of')? It is because of a simple process in the mind called 'DELETION'.

Deletion occurs when we selectively pay attention to certain aspects of our experience and not others. We then overlook or omit others.

Another example of Deletion is when we are so absorbed in watching the cricket match on TV that we fail to hear or see anything else happening in the room.

Actually, Deletion is useful too. Without deletion, we would be faced with much too much information to handle with our conscious mind.

Imagine, for example, when you are in a seminar, while trying to pay attention to the words of the speaker, you also have to pay attention to the noise of the traffic outside, the sound of the A.C., the creak of the chairs, the coughing of other people in the room... How tough it would be?

So, there's useful Deletion and not useful deletion. The trick is to consciously avoid the not useful deletion... something that we can learn in NLP.

Then there are other filters of the mind called Distortion and generalization, but let's save that for another day.

I've also added a PPT with some good stuff. Check it out and give me your views.

Regards,

Amruth