Could you select a lowercase G from a lineup?
However, before we get into that, just take a look and examine yourself. (Just select one. Thers the one that just about everyone writes , which is a circle with a tail that points left. Is like the G in the Arial font, and the researchers predict this oneopentail The other one, calledlooptail is that the kind you see at a font like Times New Roman: two circles, connected by a line on the left side. (So, the correct response for the above test is . The Johns Hopkins research had three components.
To begin with, the investigators asked 38 adults to record letters which have two lowercase versions. Of the 38 participants, only two individuals listed the letter G. Next, 16 new volunteers silently read a paragraph that had 14 of those tricky looptail Gs.
They had to say each word with a aloud, then compose the G they just saw on a piece of paper. Half of them wrote the entail kind, even though the words had a looptail G, and individuals who attempted to write the right version failed. Only one person could take action. In the last section, 25 participants chose the multiple-choice test over, where they were asked to pick the right lowercase G out of the lineup. Just seven people picked the right answer.
So why does this thing, besides being vaguely embarrassing?
A similar phenomenon has been observed in China, in which the written language consists of complicated characters. There, individuals are able to develop personality amnesia because there so used to typing on the computer.
Because of this, individuals can still recognize the character, but they do know the specific strokes anymore, especially if the personality is more complicated. Is nothing new that we dot pay superb close attention to things we see every day.
But researchers are now trying to understand how switching to electronics is affecting our memory and our literacy. In the meantime, consider this a reminder that we dot consider things as closely as we think.
