Human brain can process certain sentences in 'blink of an eye'(theguardian.com)
theguardian.com
Human brain can process certain sentences in 'blink of an eye'
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/23/human-brain-can-process-certain-sentences-in-blink-of-an-eye-says-study
2 comments
Many people can scan pages at the rate of a few seconds per page to pull out keywords. They are relying on the same ability to fuzzy-match the structure of a sentence, looking for the topic, beginning of a dependent clause, Personal Names, and so on. I spent far too much time doing that before we could ctrl-F everything. It's not all that reliable but it does seem to suggest people can match against text in massive parallel. And which word percolates first up to consciousness when confronted with a block of text is not random.
I am such one. Many think of this like I’m performing magic. Generally I can scan a long text and immediately identify the very few sentences actually containing useful details.
If I’m tired or inebriated I misread words on funy ways (though not when I slow down to a normal pace.) Unusual words also make this speed skimming stop in its tracks.
If I’m tired or inebriated I misread words on funy ways (though not when I slow down to a normal pace.) Unusual words also make this speed skimming stop in its tracks.