mardi 29 mars 2016

"That's a funny-looking word!"

You know that experience, when you read a familiar word, and you think "that's a really weird-looking word"? In my experience, it can happen with words of any length, with common or relatively unfamiliar ones, and usually it happens while writing, rather than just reading the word.

It's a ubiquitous and frequently commented on phenomenon, probably because there is so much spontaneous written communication these days, so I wonder if there is any research on the neuropsychological mechanisms behind this experience, or related ones?

My hypothesis is that it relates to some kind of temporary disconnect in the chain of the understanding of a word as such; its representation in a medium; the written characters it is composed of; the individual characters; the strokes and figures that make up a "character". And that somehow, this disconnect causes us to see a word differently.

FWIW, English is my second language, and I find it happening more often with English than with Swedish words. But I also write far more text in English than in Swedish.

Thoughts? Links?


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/1MzwQ6n

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