You are reading a restaurant menu when you suddenly notice that one word is spelled incorrectly. A friend sitting beside you has not noticed it at all. Later, you see a typo in a social media post, a missing letter on a shop sign and an awkwardly written sentence on a website. Once you see them, they seem impossible to ignore. Psychology suggests that this habit may partly reflect individual differences in selective attention, the processes through which the mind prioritizes some information while filtering out other details. Researchers have found meaningful differences between individuals in attentional control, visual selection and the ability to focus on task-relevant information. But noticing spelling mistakes is not evidence of a particular personality type or superior intelligence.
Reading experience, vocabulary, familiarity with written language and whether someone is actively looking for errors can all influence what they notice. The more interesting possibility is that some people may naturally or habitually give greater attentional priority to small textual irregularities.
