Research shows that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading. Why is this so?

Research shows that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading! Facts have proved that when you finish reading this sentence, you will find that the characters are all messed up.

One way Interesting test questions aroused netizens' thirst for knowledge

"I thought it was just the word 'sequential' that was wrong, but after reading everyone's comments, I realized that the entire title was wrong..." Regarding the online comments in the past two days Many netizens said that if someone hadn't reminded them of the "erroneous sentence" that went viral, they wouldn't have discovered the fishiness in the sentence. Some netizens also posted a joke that many people didn’t know what the point of the joke was, proving that it is easy for people to miss the wrong order of Chinese characters. "He yelled, believe it or not, I'm going to call a van full of people to beat you up!" At first glance, I didn't think there was anything funny about this sentence. After a closer look, I discovered that "a van full of people" was written as "a van full of people". "The van man". The difference in one word does not hinder reading, but the meaning is very different. What is the reason that makes us easily "dazzled"? This aroused the curiosity of many netizens. A large number of netizens started discussions on many domestic popular science websites such as Guoke.com and Zhihu.com.

The order is wrong, why can I read it clearly?

A people are born with "confidence"

After a rough scan, they will be automatically sorted in memory order

Psycholinguistics teacher at the School of Psychology, Nanjing Normal University Chen Qingrong told reporters that this phenomenon is actually caused by people's innate "confidence" mentality, ignoring details and hastily making conclusions about things only by their "appearance".

Chen Qingrong said that when the human eye reads text, it does not scan each word one by one, but scans in areas. They found through experiments that when the human eye is staring at a Chinese character, the peripheral vision can see 1-2 Chinese characters on the left side of the Chinese character and 2-3 Chinese characters on the right side. In total, the human eye can see up to 5-6 Chinese characters at a time. Chinese character. At the same time, when reading the entire article, the eyes often read across lines and jump forward. If you are proficient in reading, you can read a few more lines, or even "ten lines at a glance".

When you see the sentence "Research shows that the order of Chinese characters does not necessarily affect reading", because the content is common, after a rough scan of the eyes, the subconscious mind defaults to this sentence as a sentence. A simple sentence pattern does not require deep processing. The superficial consciousness of the brain will automatically sort the words according to the order in memory, interpret it in the form it thinks is correct, and remember it. It's like seeing a figure with flowing long hair and inferring that it's a woman without stepping forward to confirm.

B Holistic perception is better than details

In one sentence, a picture, it is easier to overlook details when viewed together

“People are in areas they are familiar with. The perception of the whole will take precedence over the perception of detailed components!” Chen Qingrong said that people inherently like to ignore details, especially when they think they are already familiar with a certain field. For example, "There is bright moonlight in front of the bed, and I suspect it is frost on the ground." At first glance, there is no problem with this sentence. If you read it out, you must follow the order of "There is bright moonlight in front of the bed, and it is suspected that there is frost on the ground." Because when people read, they have already overlapped the two erroneous poems with similar scenes in their memory. They are very familiar with the content of a sentence and can "brain" the correct form when they see the structure. Chen Qingrong told reporters that there is a very famous picture in psychology (picture on the right): a pattern that looks like both the number 13 and the letter B, with A and C written on the left and right, and 12 and 14 written on the top and bottom. The middle shape looks more like the letter "B" when viewed from left to right, but looks like the number 13 when viewed from top to bottom. "People have the same problem with graphics. If you put a roast chicken on a table decorated for Christmas, people will consciously think that it is a turkey, because turkeys are eaten on Christmas!"

C Familiar Areas Automatic "brain supplement"

It is not easy to misunderstand the new field. Ancient people and foreigners would read habitually

"'Jintong Psychology' I believe many people can spot which word is wrong at a glance , but people who study psychology tend to regard it as 'general psychology'." Chen Qingrong told reporters that "brain speculation" is not a wild guess, but must be based on a certain context and context.

This situation only exists in things that have been exposed to. If it is a new field and the "material" of association is insufficient, people need to read word by word or even repeatedly to understand, and there will be no misreading.

Chen Qingrong told reporters that people’s habitual reading depends on the language environment in which they live, and has little to do with different languages ????and the arrangement of words. This will happen as long as people are familiar with a certain type of text. Modern people find it more difficult to read the vertical layout of the ancients. In addition, there is no punctuation mark, so they often read it word by word. However, the ancients were used to seeing the vertical layout of the ancients, and they also ignored the order of the words. This is also the case in English. "Do you undrestnad?" I believe anyone who knows a little bit of English can understand that it means "Do you understand?"

The order is wrong, does it not affect reading?

Although it is possible to read in the wrong order

But it actually increases the amount of brain work and reduces the reading speed

On the surface, "research shows that the order of Chinese characters Does it necessarily affect reading? "This sentence reads very smoothly, but in fact, through eye movement analysis, Chen Qingrong found that compared to reading sentences in normal order, it is significantly more difficult for people to read sentences with the positions of morphemes reversed. When reading, When reading these sentences, the reading time will be extended, the saccade amplitude will become smaller, and the number of retrospections will increase. These indicators all indicate that the difficulty of sentence reading comprehension has increased.

Because the human brain needs to reorder the disordered Chinese characters, this not only increases the time but also increases the burden of processing information on the human brain. Therefore, people are more likely to get tired when reading these sentences with Chinese characters in chaotic order.

Of course, after the order of Chinese characters is reversed and confused, the reader's reading comprehension accuracy is still 92. This shows that after readers identify the wrong words with reversed morpheme positions, they can still activate the correct words and thereby gain semantic meaning. However, readers can recognize high-frequency words with reversed morpheme positions significantly faster than low-frequency words with reversed morpheme positions. This confirms what was said before, and it is easier for people to make self-judgments about things they are familiar with.

Teach you two tricks

How to read at high speed

Read the middle of a sentence and look at both sides with your peripheral vision

"Like Huang Rong There are very few people in real life who can never forget the "Nine Yin Manual" like her mother." Chen Qingrong told reporters that unless they are born with superior intelligence or have undergone later training, most people's instant memory is not very different. But if you master some skills, you can still improve your reading speed.

1. Browse Weibo to read the title. Do multiple-choice questions in the shortest possible time and distinguish what is important and what is not.

2. Start reading from the middle of a sentence. People can read the text on both sides with their peripheral vision, and the information they obtain may not be sufficient and accurate, but they can gradually train themselves.

3. Expand knowledge reserves. The richer the relevant knowledge and experience, the deeper and more comprehensive the understanding of the object of perception will be, and the perception will become more rapid, complete and correct. The more books you read in the same field, the faster you will read.

4. No need to shake your head to look. The speed and efficiency of human eye movement are much higher than that of the head, and the structure of the human eye also determines that people can see more information when looking left and right than looking up and down.

5. Exercise the right brain. The left brain is good at language, and the right brain is good at spatial relationships. If the left and right brains can be used simultaneously, the speed of text absorption can be increased. Chinese characters are characters with a strong sense of space. There has been a saying in China that "calligraphy and painting have the same origin" since ancient times, which has advantages in this regard.

How to read carefully

Mention that you should read word for word

When it comes to important written materials such as contracts and prescriptions, the omission of a single Chinese character often leads to disaster. A cashmere clothing company in Jining, Shandong Province once encountered this situation. When signing the contract, they did not find that the other party had written September 30th instead of September 3rd. This eventually led to a deviation in the delivery time and a loss of 400,000 yuan. How to avoid this situation from happening? Chen Qingrong reminded that it is human nature to be "careless" and neglect details in the fields that you are familiar with. You can only use psychological suggestions to remind yourself to treat it with caution and develop habits, especially when looking at the fields you are familiar with. When writing an article, it is best to read it word by word to avoid omissions.

■Small link

It is sometimes a disease for children to skip or omit words when reading

Dr. Wang from the Medical Psychology Department of Nanjing Brain Hospital reminded that most Misreading and misunderstanding are related to personal habits, but there are also dyslexia caused by personal physiological reasons. This disease mainly exists in children.

Some people will skip words, omit words, and mess up the order when reading. Dr. Wang said that dyslexia is mainly caused by problems with the nerves in children's brains that are responsible for reading, which may be caused by brain damage. "I recognize several words in a sentence but cannot pronounce them, which leads to word skipping." Dr. Wang reminded that external stimulation can also cause children to have obstacles when encountering some sensitive words and sentences, and cannot read normally. These parents should also Notice.