Years ago a small part of my work involved proof-reading successive editions of a book (a 500-page manual). I would write my suggested changes on a printout—not typo corrections, but improvements to wording & content requiring thought & expertise.
Once when doing this I had a slight sense of deja vu after correcting a page, so I looked up the same marked-up page in an earlier edition I had proof-read a year or more before. Not only had I marked the exact same changes (which mistakenly had not been implemented), but used almost identical pen-strokes, including both times changing a word, then thinking better of it and crossing out my change in favour of a different suggestion. So I had clearly gone through an identical thought process over several minutes for the whole page. (I still have both pages somewhere.)
I wondered at the time if psychologists had ever studied this kind of thing.
Years ago a small part of my work involved proof-reading successive editions of a book (a 500-page manual). I would write my suggested changes on a printout—not typo corrections, but improvements to wording & content requiring thought & expertise.
Once when doing this I had a slight sense of deja vu after correcting a page, so I looked up the same marked-up page in an earlier edition I had proof-read a year or more before. Not only had I marked the exact same changes (which mistakenly had not been implemented), but used almost identical pen-strokes, including both times changing a word, then thinking better of it and crossing out my change in favour of a different suggestion. So I had clearly gone through an identical thought process over several minutes for the whole page. (I still have both pages somewhere.)
I wondered at the time if psychologists had ever studied this kind of thing.