So how does the the human brain ignore the second the?
In: Biology
[removed]
We’re too used to reading English that we don’t actually read every word, but the sentence as a whole.
(When I was learning Spanish in school I had to read every word and then combine them to understand what it means)
We don’t actually read every word in a sentence. Our brains pick up the patterns and fill in the blanks as we skim along the text, which greatly increases our reading speed while doing very little to reduce comprehension.
We do it with just about all sensory input, as well. We blank out while driving but still reach our destinations with no incidents, we tune out smells pretty quickly (no matter how bad the smell is), we tune out physical sensations (you’re now aware of how your tongue is resting in your mouth, also you’re breathing manually), we hit that autopilot button at work and just coast through it while thinking about the grocery shopping, etc.
It’s probably an evolutionary trait that evolved from a need to be vigilant against **unique sensory input**, like sudden movements and noticing things that aren’t supposed to be there. We’re good at recognizing patterns, and tune things out to reduce overall taxation from sensory inputs so we can instead focus on novel inputs.
Small edit: I’m an English tutor, and one of the practices we use to catch those kinds of mistakes is to read the whole text backward. Doing this tricks the brain into not recognizing the speech patterns and causes it to focus on each word.
Thank you for the reports that this may be a repost. We are experimenting with variations on previously implemented policies regarding reposts and have recently amended rule 7 to only apply to unarchived posts (less than 6 months old).
Do you have thoughts about that? Please feel free to respond to this post with your opinion. Have you seen this post before? When is the next time you want to see it again?
While I have your attention, if you’re not familiar with them take a peek at the [the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules)… especially [rule 3](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/wiki/detailed_rules#wiki_rule_3.3A_top-level_comments_must_be_written_explanations).
It might surprise you what sort of comments ELI5 is aiming for, and how strict the subreddit is in order to maintain focus. Please help us keep ELI5 the amazing place to learn everyone knows (and hopefully loves) by skimming Rule 3 and reporting any violations!
What we ‘see’ isn’t what’s actually there. It’s the same as how we have a big blind spot in the center of our field of vision and our brain fills in the details.
Our eyes detect light and send signals to our brain. Our brain interprets those signals and builds a model of the world that isn’t necessarily accurate, but is usually good enough for us to function.
Things like this show that the model built isn’t necessarily accurate, but that details will be filled in by our brain based on surrounding detail.
Another one is that I can type words incorrectly and as long as the first and last letters are present a quick raed show that your brain will fill in the detials and ‘show’ you the correct word.
Your brain is very efficient (lazy). It can ignore redundancies unless you focus on them. A neat experiment to do ( but can be difficult) is if you stare at one point for a good amount of time, and I mean stare don’t move your eyes even a bit, you’ll notice it starts to disappear. Your brain is saying this is not new input so I will ignore it. Its why your eyes are constantly doing micro movements you may not notice and why when look from one thing to another quickly you don’t see a blur but instead feels like your vision teleported.
[removed]
Your brain doesn’t take in information. It takes in patterns on information.
I dotn haev to be detialed in my tpying for you to now wat I’m sayin.
You can read what I just wrote. Just like you can understand the gist of a sentence with two thes.
You get the pattern, and then you can disregruard.
[removed]
[removed]
Latest Answers