131–140 of 180 posts
I realize this is a corner case, but I wonder how dyslexics will perform using a font that looks even less like a letterform — when it is already a struggle to combine several into a word.
I was worried about exactly this when I was thinking about using it for company training materials. Apparently the benefit for dyslexics (if you believe this study) is even greater than for non-dyslexics.
thats a nightmare if you are dyslexic/practic/etc
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compelling, but the Sans Forgetica font's effect is focused on recall/remembering. From the two abstracts you linked (I'm not paying for the papers) it appears the experiments were testing the effect of disfluent fonts on reasoning. These are different cognitive activities, so it doesn't really disconfirm the font's creators' claims.
I just checked the review with Sci-Hub, and you are correct. I was much too hasty. The memory effect is still plausible, they write: > "Although the more general prevalence of “desirable difficulties” (Bjork, 1994) is beyond the scope of this article, several research groups have found that disfluent fonts improve performance on memory tasks (Cotton et al, 2014, Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011; French et…
There's an ancient Greeks' way to read text more effectively called Boustrophedon. The idea is that the text lines are interleaved with x-axis mirrored lines, so your eyes move not by Z-shape trajectory, but like meander. There're demo texts to learn to use it [1].
As for my experience, I can't say I'd been understanding or remembering more or less while reading boustro, especially when I'd begun to get used to it.
There was excitement when the first study showed hard-to-read fonts improved test performance in 2007[1]. Since then, there have been enough attempted replications for a 2015 review to conclude that there's no effect[2]. [1] Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning: http://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2007-16657-003 [2] Disfluent fonts don’t help people solve math problems: http://psycnet.ap…
It's too late for me to edit this comment, but I was wrong to dismiss Sans Forgetica based on the review. I checked the paper and it notes: > Although the more general prevalence of “desirable difficulties” (Bjork, 1994) is beyond the scope of this article, several research groups have found that disfluent fonts improve performance on memory tasks (Cotton et al, 2014, Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011; Fre…
I was doing research in this area in 2005-2006. Mine was focused on recall of English vocabulary by ESL learners. I chose to explore spacing intervals (a hot topic then). The font disfluency aspect isn't something I had heard of until today. I did a cursory search and found the first mentions of it between 2007 and 2011.
I wish I had proposed using Comic Sans over Arial to improve recall. It would have made my experiments (and analysis turnaround) quicker than a semester. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not a joke, claiming that being harder to read help understanding things remind me the ancient Victorian era, the Cilicium idea, the "all work and no play" song etc. I do not consider it a scientific truth but only another reactionary claim that can be as scientific as Franklin idea of forcibly wake up people with a cannon shoot in any road.
http://www.matthewfrench.net/pubs/fontspreprint.pdf (to pick one example) You may not know it, but there are studies backing this up. Whether you consider it a scientific truth or not is barely relevant. What is interesting to know is that not all disfluencies are created equal: blurring text and adding visual noise don't help, apparently because they don't engage the right part of the visual pathway.
Personally I notice that force me to read difficult fonts does not help at all my understatement or my memory. In the end my idea, without statistical proof of course, is that such contrasting observation are simply noise. Perhaps due to a sample size not big enough, perhaps due to tested individual itself but still noise.
Also IMVHO such studies exist for a reason: teacher's mean quality is getting lower and lower due to various schools reforms and since admit errors it's not a thing these days someone try a sort of "montecarlo test" in the desperate search of a solution to stop the bleeding. Other find such tentative nice for their business because new stuff means new sales for someone.
The basic idea has to do with a concept called processing fluency. Studies have shown that the harder your brain has to work to process the information, the more likely you are to absorb it -- at least to a point. One recent study that manipulated processing fluency using a hard-to-read font is "Fluency and the detection of misleading questions: Low processing fluency attenuates the Moses illusion," Social Cognition,…
I have a book on shameless shilling you might like to read.