Consolation for those who always tries to blurt out the stupidity in the conversation. We are not so stupid, what sometimes seem. Just very inattentive. And all because in the information age, our brains saves power. After all, if you will handle any information that you see and hear in the course of the day, you risk to go crazy. In ordinary conversation brain, without straining, snatches of speech interlocutor only keywords that sometimes leads to misunderstandings.

How many animals of each species Moses took in the ark? If you answer is "on the pair', that was wrong. Of course, not that the ark was in a pair of every creature. Just built it Noi. This is an example of the famous "illusions of Moses": most people will first give a wrong answer, at least mentally, and then think about the apparent inconsistency of biblical names.

What to do: we live in an era of smart phones, text and audio ads and posters screaming at every step. Not coping with all this information, it simply saves resources, preferring to handle only single "key" characters, characters and words.

Scientists from the University of Glasgow, with the support of the Council for economic and social research conducted an experiment. They asked for volunteers to read and listen to a number of proposals, pressing enter after each one of the two buttons: "Good" - in that case, if the proposal was logical, or "Nonsense", if it contains any error.

In preliminary tests, the vast number of subjects (95 percent) coped with the task, finding a mistake in this sentence: "Airline, which flew Kim, lost her ass on the way there, so she left without service". The donkey and the suitcase to create confusion - but all because of a lost object was in this proposal key object. What if the error is less obvious?

"If the plane is going to crash right on the border between the U.S. and Mexico, where do you bury the survivors?".

"The teacher carefully thought out plan of classroom management. The children have time to learn all 33 figures of the alphabet in the classroom at today's session".

"Travel company conducted a survey asking people where they want to go on holiday. Many Britons have chosen Spain for two weeks leave from the summer sun".

"How to brew a Cup of fine tea. Take the packet and carefully pour the tea from the teapot into the Cup".

These proposals interspersed perfectly logical phrases error saw only 40 percent of subjects. With the help of electroencephalogram scientists analyzed the activity of the brain during the test. It was found that the brains of volunteers who have missed illogical proposal did not notice the key "wrong" words. If they paid attention to a word that was wrong, the brain is "a" - activity of the nervous system immediately changed. In situations where volunteers missed a word, no changes in the brain was not observed.

Above "semantic illusion" is built in such a way that words are consistent with the overall context of the proposal but were not accurate. But we often miss them because our brain is kind of "autopilot"the researchers say. As in the example of a plane crash on the border of the United States and Mexico: the word "survivors" suited to the General context of the situation, and it's easy not to notice that buried-it is necessary not to, and victims of the crash.

This study is not just a funny observation of the paradoxes of brain work. The thing is that until now, scientists believed it for granted that our brain hears and processes each spoken by the interlocutor of the word. But, as we see, it is not so.

"As a rule, researchers believed that we have a very deep analysis of any information which we receive, " says Professor Hartmut Resold (Hartmut Leuthold), lead author of the study. "But our discovery is that the human brain draws attention to the situation in only a very rough approximation of".

In the evolution of our brain has learned to use minimal resources to analyze the situation up until everything goes smoothly" - says Resold. And there are reasons. If our nervous system is busy processing every word that he hears, it would simply not have the strength left for anything else. So the habit of listening with half an ear - just a protective reaction, not stupidity or laziness as it may seem at first glance.

"If you analyze every word, treating every one of several possible values, normal conversation became impossible, " explains the Professor. - Every word processed approximately 200-300 milliseconds". That is why the speakers in the TV programs allocate voice keywords to any person immediately became clear, what is the main news.

Thus, the analysis of the meanings of the individual words in the speech comes at a very superficial level, say the authors of the experiment. And our brain continues to operate in the mode "center"until recognizes a word that seems he really inappropriate in this context. Researchers from Glasgow recognize that in order to clarify the brain more research is needed, and would be curious what would you say on the subject of their colleagues.

But even now it is clear: if you do not want to seem stupid, you will have some time to strain and carefully analyze each word. Otherwise there is a risk blurt out that the ark was built by Moses, and in the alphabet 33 figures.