Cambridge University human language processing experiment

Puzzle Statement:

Dr. Don Weasenforth recently sent the following tidbit to some of his colleagues:


You might be interested in talking and reading about the following
reading experiment:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer
in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is
taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be
a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is
bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the
wrod as a wlohe.
                                                                          
Amzanig eh?

Question: How true is this? How about trying it with a more complex sample?

Solution

I found a copy of Bertrand Russell's Proposed Roads to Freedom and plugged the Introduction in to a simple script I wrote to perform this scrambling automatically.

NOTE: I take the liberty of giving four-letter words a "standard" scramble from 1·2·3·4 to 1·3·2·4.

The Program

Click HERE to see the tcl program.

The Output

You'll find the mSoft Word™ document here.