[michaelmrose]

> In German, all nouns are capitalised. Reading a prose in German LOokS lIkE this TO mE.

This is hard to read both because capitalization is a clue that another sentence is starting in English and because uneven multiple capitalization makes it harder to recognize a word. Your brain almost stutters as it pauses to turn the unfamiliar LOokS into looks. Presumably Germans expect the additional capitalization and don't experience this extra processing whereas if you are used to English you are used to deriving different data from more sparsely applied capitalization. While LOokS causes poorer performance for everyone. I think your comparison of highlighting to German capitalization rules is more apt than comparing it to capitalizing random letters.

In keeping with the argument made earlier in the text this ought to improve your understanding of prose because it makes you slow down and really parse it. In reality your brain has a finite amount of processing power and memory and consciously focusing on turning unfamiliar structures into intelligible data and if the data you are taking in is complicated you are taking away resources by being forced to more consciously process it.

You might actually apply this thinking to your experience with syntax highlighting if you aren't used to it you attend to it more so than the data expressed by the code. Your preference and familiarity leads to a different experience than individuals who are used to using it. This doesn't make your preference wrong or right but I question your conclusion that it leads to more attentive reading. I suggest instead that if you discover oft overlooked bugs it is rather because are a more attentive reader rather than being down to reading without syntax highlighting being more effective.