I find (somewhat surprisingly) I can do this quite easily with printed text. Is this ability fairly universal or not? Does eyeryone do this?
Additionally why can people do this? The text is upside down and going in the wrong direction, yet is easily recognizable. Is it a a function of the way humans process images, or is it more a function of the way you were taught to read?
Never thought about it, but I have no problem doing it.
Made it a lot easier sharing books in school during study.
I would guess that any normal person who can not easily do this could do so with a bit of practice. The same applies to reading mirror text. If you can’t do it, it’s probably just an indication that you haven’t had any reason to try it very often.
As usual, I hit submit too quick… :smack:
I just wanted to post a link to an article that mentioned it.
I can write upside down, backwards, mirror writing blindfolded. I did not acquire the skill through practice, it’s just something I once discovered I could do. People seem to think it’s remarkable, though.
That’s kind of the point of my question. Per yabob’s point I never “trained” to read upside down and backwards, I just can. My brain just sort of “interprets” the reversed images. According to the quote by harmless, this appears to be a fairly common ability.
That is a bit frightening! :eek:
Hope you don’t mind another one, but I found this interesting:
From the National Library of Medicine.
Lucky for me the witch burning days are over.
Maybe it’s retlaed to tihs pheonemnon.
I was told that Galileo *chose * to write in mirror writing. By someone who could do the same happily. She thought the ability has something to do with being artistic and having a dominant left part of the brain or something. It seemed a reasonable theory but I do not know if it holds any water.
Personnally, I don’t have this ability. I just tried, and I had to pay close attention to each word to be able to read it. So, it would be very tedious.
I think you are probably thinking of Leonardo Da Vinci rather than Galileo.
RE Leonardo’s mirror written Codex is it true that this was considered some nigh unbreakable “code”, until a young girl touring the exhibit noticed it was mirror writing and pointed this out, or is this just a fanciful tale?
Maybe everyone else was illiterate? I don’t see how literate people could have not noticed that.
The amazing thing is that I have no trouble reading the label on an lp, while it’s rotating on a turntable. I have not idea what goes on in my brain when I do this.
It isn’t that difficult with a 33 1/3. It was held to be an indication of how well he could see the pitch that Ted Williams could do it with a 78.
I used to be in the printing business, and it was quite helpful to be able to read upside-down, backwards, as well as upside-down and backwards.
Another parlour trick of mine was to stand at a counter across froma another person, with the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle between us. The page would be facing the other person, and we would both fill the grid at once; me reading clues upside-down and writing answers both upside-down and right-to-left.
In first & second grade, when I had just learned to read, it was just as easy either way. I’d think it would probably be true for everyone (right?)
Now it’s more awkward upside down, but practice would probably make it easy. For starters, it is working by word recognition rather than letter-by-letter.
I really suck at upside down. A lot of the time I can recognize some of the letters and then guess the whole word quickly, but sometimes I’ll just get stuck and have to turn the paper upside down. I got stuck on the word “and” when I tried.
I think with practice I’d be good at it though.