Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by chromas on Friday April 06 2018, @06:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the double-storey dept.

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

Despite seeing it millions of times in pretty much every picture book, every novel, every newspaper and every email message, people are essentially unaware of the more common version of the lowercase print letter "g," Johns Hopkins researchers have found.

Most people don't even know that two forms of the letter -- one usually handwritten, the other typeset -- exist. And if they do, they can't write the typeset one we usually see. They can't even pick the correct version of it out of a lineup.

[...] Unlike most letters, "g" has two lowercase print versions. There's the opentail one that most everyone uses when writing by hand; it looks like a loop with a fishhook hanging from it. Then there's the looptail g, which is by far the more common, seen in everyday fonts like Times New Roman and Calibri and, hence, in most printed and typed material.

Source: http://releases.jhu.edu/2018/04/03/jhu-finds-letter-weve-seen-millions-of-times-yet-cant-write/


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday April 06 2018, @02:55PM

    by TheLink (332) on Friday April 06 2018, @02:55PM (#663439) Journal

    Yeah just because we can recognize something doesn't mean we can draw it from scratch. Whether it's a typographical character or a human face.

    http://www.caltech.edu/news/single-cell-recognition-halle-berry-brain-cell-1013 [caltech.edu]

    For example, a single neuron in the left posterior hippocampus of one subject responded to 30 out of 87 images. It fired in response to all pictures of actress Jennifer Aniston, but not at all, or only very weakly, to other famous and non-famous faces, landmarks, animals, or objects. The neuron also (and wisely, it turns out) did not respond to pictures of Jennifer Aniston together with actor Brad Pitt.

    In another patient, pictures of Halle Berry activated a neuron in the right anterior hippocampus, as did a caricature of the actress, images of her in the lead role of the film Catwoman, and a letter sequence spelling her name.

    Perhaps the way it works is as if the sensory and other neurons are "reading out numbers" in a Bingo Hall of the brain and when the right numbers are read the Halle Berry (or "g" letter) neurons yell out "BINGO! Halle Berry!" and most of the rest of the neurons go "OK, I guess that's Halle Berry".

    But to actually draw Halle Berry takes a lot more coordination and effort from a lot more neurons and possibly a different set of neurons. After all when I think g while typing vs when I think g while writing, the "concept g" neurons are probably mostly the same but the output neurons are different depending on whether I'm typing or writing. And when I think and type "might" far fewer neurons might be thinking of the letter g but it still gets typed :).

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2