Most people can’t look at this sentence without being overwhelmed by the urge to read it.

　　许多人看到这句话便难以自制地将它读了出来。

　　That’s according to psychologist and dyslexia specialist Lidia Stanton who claims we have all been brainwashed into automatically reading sentences.

　　心理学家和诵读困难症专家莉迪亚·斯坦顿称，我们其实都被洗脑了，见到文字就会自动读出来。

　　This, she says, stems from the stories we learned to read when we were young – a learning process Stanton claims ’is irreversible’.

　　斯坦顿表示这一切源于我们小时候读的故事书，且这一过程是“不可逆的”。

　　The University of Leicester professor wrote on Q&A website Quora: ’Neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists joke that reading is a form of brainwashing.

　　这位莱斯特大学的教授在问答网站Quora上写到“神经学家和认知学家都开玩笑说阅读就是在洗脑。”

　　Literate people only need to look at print to know what it says.

　　“识字的人看上一眼就知道这句话的意思。”

　　If I put a word or two in front of your eyes, you’ll feel compelled to read it - your brain does it for you automatically before you decide whether to read or not.’

　　“如果眼前出现了一两个单词，你认为自己必须要读上一读--在你决定是读还是不读前，大脑其实已经自动做出了决定。”

　　To illustrate this point, Stanton posted the following words: ’Lucy is going to the park and she is taking the dog for a walk.’

　　斯坦顿给出了下面这句话来解释这一现象“Lucy is going to the park and she is taking the dog for a walk. ”

　　Try to force yourself not to read the sentence while looking at it.

　　“试着逼自己不要把这句话读出来。”

　　Investigate the visual look of the words without reading them,’ Stanton says.

　　“研究单词的视觉形象而不读出它们。”

　　Assuming you are an English speaker, it is very, difficult to look at the text without reading the words.

　　假设你讲英语，那么只看着这些词却不能读出来是件非常困难的事。

　　For contrast, try to name what each symbol represents in the second image. While this isn’t difficult, it takes much longer than reading.

　　反之请试着说出第二张图中每个图形代表什么。这倒不难，不过花的时间比朗读要长得多。

    The Stroop Effect is another example of this process in action.

　　另一个例子则是斯特鲁普效应。

　　斯特鲁普实验是一项研究人类思维的著名实验。这项实验要求参与者说出图中每个单词的颜色。

　　The challenge is managing to identify the correct colour when the word spells out a different colour.

　　难点在于，参与者要正确说出这些单词在图中的具体颜色，而不是单词本身表示的颜色。

　　Because our brains have been conditioned to read words before we see colours, the task is mentally taxing for most people.

　　由于看到文字时大脑的第一反应是阅读，其次才是识别颜色，许多人感到大伤脑筋。

　　Stanton says: ’We find this faster reading vs. naming problem astonishing because when we were children, it was the other way round.

　　斯坦顿说：“这项提速版的‘读字对识字’的挑战令人们感到惊讶，因为自孩提时代起，我们接受的就是相反的训练。”

　　The learning to read process is irreversible.

　　“这种学习过程是不可逆的。”

　　This is why it is a kind of ’brainwashing’ - the choice has been taken away from us.’

　　“因此有些人称它为‘洗脑’--大脑其实已没有别的选择了。”

　　There’s another side to the phenomenon,’ Stanton told Dailymail.com.

　　“然而这一现象还存在着另外一面。”斯坦顿告诉《每日邮报》网站

　　While most people take reading for granted, many dyslexics never experience this type of ’brainwashing’ because their brains resist fluent reading.

　　许多人认为阅读是理所当然的，诵读困难症患者却从未经历过“洗脑”的过程--他们干脆无法流畅地完成阅读。

　　Depending on the severity of dyslexia, in the first instance, many dyslexics would be drawn to the shape of words, rather than their names or meanings.

　　由于病症的影响，诵读困难症患者在看第一张图时只会关注每个单词的形状，而不是单词的意思。

　　It’s possible this sensitivity to word shapes and letter patterns is linked to the widely discussed creativity and gift of dyslexia - seeing something else when most people are ’only’ capable of getting the meaning from words and rarely notice words’ physical features.’

　　许多诵读困难症患者因祸得福，变得更具创造性，更具天赋--因为大多数人只关注单词的意思，却察觉不到单词的样子。

（编辑：何莹莹）