So how does the the human brain ignore the second the?
In: Biology
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.
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)
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Short version: Our brains are tuned for pattern recognition and prediction, not detail. That’s also why things that break the expected pattern/outcome can be so jarring. Sometimes it’s in a fun way, though. See movie twists, stage magic, joke punchlines and so on.
It’s a filtering mechanism. Ignore the leaves, see the broken up/partial shape or movement of the predator hiding behind them.
I’m guessing people who are learning English won’t skip it naturally as they are not used to the patterns and are more focussed on piecing together the meaning?
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