4 ms·

I can do this as well. I thought everyone could do it, and just realised it's not the case. I think it has to do with how you represent the words in your mind.

I can do this as well. I thought everyone could do it, and just realised it's not the case. I think it has to do with how you represent the words in your mind. For me there is no difference between "a word" and "a stream of letters". I can also speak fluently spelling out letters of words forward or backward without thinking. "hello" and [h,e,l,l,o] is the same to me, and it requires no effort to switch from one to the other. I also picture the full [h,e,l,l,o] at once, it seems others have to rebuild the spelling from left to right in their head.

Rygian 3y ago
"Hello" and "Olleh" have matching reverse pronunciations. Does it also come naturally to you to prononce "tuohguorht" as the reverse of "throughout"?
- Galanwe 3y ago
  > Does it also come naturally to you to prononce "tuohguorht" as the reverse of "throughout"? I'm not a native English speaker so the pronunciation of that kind of word (with gh and th) is not immediate to me. I know how to pronounce "throughout" more by tongue memory than by actual thinking. I can picture "tuohguorht" clearly in my head but most likely don't pronounce it how it should if it were a real word. But you highlight a good point here. I can very easily picture the forward and backward spelling, though I'm just "reading out loud the reversed word", I'm not actually reversing the sound as the person in the article,so it's a different form of visualisation, based on letters rather than sounds.