Re: forward masking (was: Re: Hugos)

From: Jason Joel Thompson (jasonjthompson@home.com)
Date: Mon Dec 18 2000 - 00:40:56 MST


----- Original Message -----
From: "Barbara Lamar" <altamiratexas@earthlink.net>

> What Damien writes makes sense. As he said earlier, these same sorts of
> errors occur in speech, and I believe similar problems can also occur in
> puzzle and problem-solving.

I have an occasional mistake I make while typing-- I will accidentally type
the wrong tense or apply the wrong suffix. In my case, this is not an error
that is replicated in speech. I'm also aware of the fact that I am not
forming the wrong words in my brain, as I type. That is to say: I 'imagine'
the sentence correctly, but when I type it these weird mistakes appear.
It's just infrequent enough to be bothersome (not so frequent as to require
rigorous proof reading, so I get lazy, and they slip through, the lil'
bastards.)

There is some sort of disconnect between the words that I have consciously
formed, and the action my fingers take on the keyboard.

Further evidence, IMO, of the society of mind-- glitchy communication
between 'conscious-sentence-forming-brain,' and
'make-the-fingers-type-letters-brain.'

Hmm... okay, now I got me thinking about this...

I wonder if 'make-the-fingers-type-letters-brain' isn't instinctively doing
a look-up on the word in question to save time. That is to say: I wonder if
it doesn't also have some direct access to 'proper-vocabulary-brain,' and it
bypasses 'conscious-sentence-forming-brain,' when it thinks it knows what
the word is.

....

Ah yes, the armchair: a lovely place from which to do science!

--

::jason.joel.thompson:: ::founder::

www.wildghost.com



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