In 2018, a group of Australian scientists has developed a new font called Sans Forgetica, which was much more difficult to read compared with the usual fonts. This was done on purpose, to test the concept of “desirable difficulties”, according to which obtained with great difficulty the reliable information is stored. However, two years later new Zealand scientists stated that as a tool for memory training font Sans Forgetica not good.
The idea of authors Sans Forgetica was that the students not only ran the text through the eyes and spend some time and effort to recognize it. And thus focused on the reading. They claimed to have tested on 400 students and they showed the memorability of text in Sans Forgetica at 57%, against 50% for common fonts. But other researchers immediately raised doubts about the reliability of the verification.
In the new experiment, was attended by 800 people and was carried out in four stages and a more thorough methodology. In particular, did not compare the abstract text, and a complex and specific terms and combinations of words, written in Arial and Sans Forgetica. All four tests showed that the level of memorization depended more from the information than from the font in which it was written.
At the same time, new Zealand scientists confirmed that the font is Sans Forgetica really complicates the reading process. This is unlikely to develop something, in addition to perseverance, but because the benefits of the new items are somewhat questionable. More precisely, it is of interest in General, but not as a pedagogical tool.
Source — University of Warwick