Brain Moves Mouse.
August 15th, 2005From Technology Review, a summary of an interesting study on how the brain works to identify words:
In the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in late June, 42 undergraduates followed instructions to click a mouse on one of two pictures on a computer monitor. Sometimes the images were different-sounding objects, such as “candle� and “jacket.� At other times, they were similar, such as “candle� and “candy.�
Researchers found that when the objects’ names were quite different, the mouse movements of the students followed a straight-line trajectory to the correct picture. When the words were similar, however, the trajectories were slower and arced. In the latter cases, Spivey hypothesized, subjects would begin processing a word at the first sound, then continued in an ambiguous state as they moved the mouse.