If yuo can raed tihs yuo hvae an amzanig mnid too!
We have all seen it, the long post on Facebook or a silly email with a bunch of jumbled up letters (or even letters and numbers) that we quickly read without much difficulty. These jumbled messages usually claim that with the first sentence it was difficult but by the end of the message you were able to read with ease. Then, the final message is usually about how absolutely amazing our mind is to do such a trick. Well, I won’t argue there, our minds are amazing. So what causes our mind to be able to perform such a terrific feat? The answer is simple: top-down processing.
What exactly is top-down processing? How is it responsible for taking jumbled letters and making sense of them (that is, turning them into language for us)? To start, top-down processing is the information that we get “from our knowledge, expectations, and experience with the world around us” (L3, p4). What this means is that we strive to make sense of the world around us as a whole.
Okay, so now that we have a very basic idea of what top-down processing is, how is it responsible for the jumbled letters and making sense of them? Let’s take a look at this: 1 h4v3 thr33 5ib1ing5. It may take you a minute, but eventually you should read that that says, “I have three siblings”. As we learned about in this chapter three of our text and the lecture commentary, we are able to read the numbers as letters because our minds are not creating an exact copy, rather our minds are using the information that it already knows to make sense of this sentence. That is to say, we use context to figure stuff out!
Often these jumbled messages say that our minds are amazing if we can read them, and you know what? They’re right! Our brains are pretty wonderful and I don’t think it could be done without the help of top-down processing!
Top-Down Processing in Cognitive Psychology. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2015, from http://home.gwu.edu/~droliver/TopDown/
I kind of did a blog on the same topic. Great minds do think alike. I find very interesting how we can decode text messages. Our brain is very complex, and for us to understand those words like “b3f0r3” is crazy because it consists of words and numbers. Throughout grade school we were taught to create words and sentences with letters, not numbers. I believe the mind is a very powerful weapon. Also, what I find very interesting is how our attention is glued to our phones and texting. Simply, text messages and notifications can catch our attention. Our external and internal attention (known as top-down or bottom-up processing), is what triggers what we do. I think you did a good job explaining this and correlating Facebook and other social media networks to explain the point you were making. You are right; we are not ignorant human beings we use context clues to figure out words, themes and so forth.
I agree with you that this is such an interesting phenomenon and such a testament to how truly amazing our brains are. I have seen these phrases quite a few times and I am always impressed when I am able to read them. Top-down processing is something that we use in our everyday lives and most of us aren’t even aware that we’re using it. Along the same lines as the jumbled words, we as people are able to navigate through our world even when words or signs are jumbled or missing letters. We’ve all driven down a road where letters on a road sign are missing or partially covered with graffiti, or seen a speed limit sign where the number 3 was changed to look like a number 8. Using our top-down processing, we know better than to drive 85 mph on a residential street because our past experience has told us that we drive slowly through neighborhoods. Top-down processing is a very useful cognitive skill and one that we should be grateful that we possess.