5 ms·

Why does the the human mind ignore the second "the"?

91 points by dsr12 11y ago

Udo 11y ago
> "Your eyes actually take in multiple words at a time and parse the sentence based on the words you've taken in. This also means that unless a particular particle is deadly important to the sentence, your brain ignores it" I have a hunch that's not actually what's going on, the second "the" gets filtered out way earlier, before it even reaches the higher features of language processing: to compensate for the constant jittering and shifting of the eye's focus, our pattern recognition modules need to navigate by close-by features in order to build up a model of what we see. In reading mode, the second "the" never even makes it to language processing because it gets filtered out during error correction as an eye-alignment error. I imagine the pseudo code backtrace would be something like this: "I saw a 'the' shape" > "move focus to next position on the right" > "still seeing the 'the' shape" > "move focus to next position on the right". So unless you decide to consciously process the line, or your visual system explicitly learns to recognize a 'the the' pattern, the data simply never gets passed along.
- ghayes 11y ago
  When you consider the fact that you experience the the effect even across multiple lines, then this explanation really doesn't sound as likely. Or, what you're saying is correct, just applied one layer up.
  - zhte415 11y ago
    Writing across multiple lines lines is a pain, but / and / or makes contrast greater because it is a pain
  - static_noise 11y ago
    Your sentence is not even wrong.
  - fao_ 11y ago
    In your sentence I found the second 'the' to be much more apparent than in the the original.
    - 36bydesign 11y ago
      Clever.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
tome 11y ago
I was certain that when I clicked through I'd see the repeated "the". Then I pressed the back button having experienced a revelation.
- Misker 11y ago
  Beat me to it.
tzs 11y ago
We also ignore minor instances of this kind of error in speech (such as mild stuttering), which makes me skeptical of the explanations based on how eyes move during reading or otherwise specific to written language.
userbinator 11y ago
Maybe the fact that I probably spend as much if not more time at work reading source code than I do English has changed something about the way I read, because I immediately saw the second "the". Then again, it could be because I've taught programming before, and that made me be more aware of things like this: for(i = 0; i < 10; i++); a[i] = i;
lowlevel 11y ago
I feel this has something to do with with the way the brain processes the images from both eyes filtering out overlap/differing perspective from each eye to make a single image. The second the seems to be more noticable to me if I close one eye... Of course now that I know its there that is probably skewing the results...
dullcrisp 11y ago
I just caught myself reading the title again as I was scanning the front page, and I actually found that I started reading it at middle where the interesting words are: "the human mind ignore...", and only momentarily glanced back at "Why does" for framing once I had already started reading. So to perhaps needlessly expand on what /u/TyrannicalDuck said algorithmically, rather than reading the words in a sentence from left to right, you glance at a sentence, estimate which parts will give you the most understanding the most quickly, start reading those, updating which parts you need to focus on next based on the information you've taken in, always focussing on the most salient parts of what you're reading, and when you estimate that you've understood that part of the sentence well enough, immediately move on to the next part. Probably similar to how the human eye takes in anything. So the articles are only given focus when skimming has failed entirely.
gaur 11y ago
This HN submission is just enabling a game of telephone by inviting people with no expertise to say what they "think" or "feel" in response to people on reddit with no expertise saying what they "think" or "feel". Garbage in, garbage out.
- soared 11y ago
  Welcome to reddit. IMO default subs shouldn't be linked on hn except in very rare occasions.
kenshaw 11y ago
This is a language issue. We ignore it in English, because it's a widely encountered error. In other languages, such as those that repeat for indicating plural (ie, the Malay family of languages), this would be glaring to speakers of that other language.
Fjolsvith 11y ago
I actually ignored the first "the".

91 points by dsr12 11y ago

Udo 11y ago

> "Your eyes actually take in multiple words at a time and parse the sentence based on the words you've taken in. This also means that unless a particular particle is deadly important to the sentence, your brain ignores it" I have a hunch that's not actually what's going on, the second "the" gets filtered out way earlier, before it even reaches the higher features of language processing: to compensate for the constant jittering and shifting of the eye's focus, our pattern recognition modules need to navigate by close-by features in order to build up a model of what we see. In reading mode, the second "the" never even makes it to language processing because it gets filtered out during error correction as an eye-alignment error. I imagine the pseudo code backtrace would be something like this: "I saw a 'the' shape" > "move focus to next position on the right" > "still seeing the 'the' shape" > "move focus to next position on the right". So unless you decide to consciously process the line, or your visual system explicitly learns to recognize a 'the the' pattern, the data simply never gets passed along.

ghayes 11y ago
When you consider the fact that you experience the the effect even across multiple lines, then this explanation really doesn't sound as likely. Or, what you're saying is correct, just applied one layer up.
- zhte415 11y ago
  Writing across multiple lines lines is a pain, but / and / or makes contrast greater because it is a pain
- static_noise 11y ago
  Your sentence is not even wrong.
- fao_ 11y ago
  In your sentence I found the second 'the' to be much more apparent than in the the original.
  - 36bydesign 11y ago
    Clever.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

tome 11y ago

I was certain that when I clicked through I'd see the repeated "the". Then I pressed the back button having experienced a revelation.

Misker 11y ago
Beat me to it.

tzs 11y ago

We also ignore minor instances of this kind of error in speech (such as mild stuttering), which makes me skeptical of the explanations based on how eyes move during reading or otherwise specific to written language.

userbinator 11y ago

Maybe the fact that I probably spend as much if not more time at work reading source code than I do English has changed something about the way I read, because I immediately saw the second "the". Then again, it could be because I've taught programming before, and that made me be more aware of things like this: for(i = 0; i < 10; i++); a[i] = i;

lowlevel 11y ago

I feel this has something to do with with the way the brain processes the images from both eyes filtering out overlap/differing perspective from each eye to make a single image. The second the seems to be more noticable to me if I close one eye... Of course now that I know its there that is probably skewing the results...

dullcrisp 11y ago

I just caught myself reading the title again as I was scanning the front page, and I actually found that I started reading it at middle where the interesting words are: "the human mind ignore...", and only momentarily glanced back at "Why does" for framing once I had already started reading. So to perhaps needlessly expand on what /u/TyrannicalDuck said algorithmically, rather than reading the words in a sentence from left to right, you glance at a sentence, estimate which parts will give you the most understanding the most quickly, start reading those, updating which parts you need to focus on next based on the information you've taken in, always focussing on the most salient parts of what you're reading, and when you estimate that you've understood that part of the sentence well enough, immediately move on to the next part. Probably similar to how the human eye takes in anything. So the articles are only given focus when skimming has failed entirely.

gaur 11y ago

This HN submission is just enabling a game of telephone by inviting people with no expertise to say what they "think" or "feel" in response to people on reddit with no expertise saying what they "think" or "feel". Garbage in, garbage out.

soared 11y ago
Welcome to reddit. IMO default subs shouldn't be linked on hn except in very rare occasions.

kenshaw 11y ago

This is a language issue. We ignore it in English, because it's a widely encountered error. In other languages, such as those that repeat for indicating plural (ie, the Malay family of languages), this would be glaring to speakers of that other language.

Fjolsvith 11y ago

I actually ignored the first "the".