Only Great Minds Can Read This Based on Cambridge University Study?

November 7, 2008 / By

Can you read the paragraph below?

fi yuo cna raed tihs, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid too

Cna yuo raed tihs? Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

End of jumbled text

You know you have them…those friends that love to send you emails with anything they find interesting on the web. Well for the most part, many of these are forgettable, but every now and then something interesting slips through. I thought that was the case with this particular one.

I became curious so I decided to research the origin of this. Apparently it’s old and has been around for a while. It took me some deep searching to find it’s apparently based on a Cambridge University study.

According to a researcher at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter in what order the letters in a word are, the only important thing is that the first and last letter be at the right place. The rest can be a total mess and you can still read it without problem. This is because the human mind does not read every letter by itself but the word as a whole.

My next stop where I go to verify the truth of anything took me to Snopes and they list it as status “Undetermined” regarding the validity. I’ve never seen that before and found that equally interesting. In any case this is interesting and I thought it was worth sharing.

Oh and in case you were wondering. I read this quite easily which is what got me interested in researching it.

23 thoughts on “Only Great Minds Can Read This Based on Cambridge University Study?”

  11. bob

    dont b mad if u cant read this
    ur jus hatin cuz u jus aint dat smart
    lol
    no seriously though dont get worked up about it cuz just dont

  12. T. Anderson

    I wonder if being able to read things backwards easily has any effect on the ability to read jumbled words properly…

    1. Mark Giblin

      Thats because thats what the passage of text was designed to show, Dyslexics from what are considered normal people….

  17. Mark Giblin

    Actually this started out as a a proof oc concept that Dyslexics brains can read and comprehend sentences that the average joe on the street would find hard, difficult or unable to comprehend.

    So no, you don’t have a great mind, what you have is a possible case of dyslexia.

  20. Linda Cherubino

    Functional MRI has proven the exact opposite of Cambridge University’s conclusion. People who are able to read this are competent readers and competent readers actually read each letter! They do it so quickly that it seems as though they are reading whole words or sentences at a time. Those of you who can read it are quickly transposing the letters into recognizable patterns that are nicely stored in your brain. And, spelling is important in that it reinforces the particular patterns in our alphabetic code – 26 letters, 44 sounds and over 200 ways to spell those sounds. And…dyslexic people are less able to read it.

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