I have just discovered an odd thing, about my son and I.
Those elementary school word searches, where a page is covered with random letters and certain words are there, in the jumble of letters, and you have to find them and circle them. We both suck at those. He gets so upset, because the "letters won't stay still". Over the years, I have learned that if I look at it, all over once, as if I'm "scanning" or something and then get away from it. I come back later and all the words are right in front of me. I don't know how I do that, so I can't teach him how to do it. We struggle with those damn things and his teacher loves them.
A similar word search game was included in another learning tool we bought for him, except instead of a flat paper with letters on it, it is designed to look like three sides are visible on a cube, with the letters drawn, following the angles of the cube sides as if to show "perspective". The letters don't move! The letters don't seem to move randomly, anymore. He has done the whole word search without my help!
Why in hell would that make such a huge difference. Is it because the forced perspective removes three random vector elements from the jumble of letters?
