Does Speed-reading Work?

Productivity
61

I agree, Josh. The six time world champion Anne Jones is recorded for 4200wpm with previous exposure to the material and 67% comprehension. What is exceptional. But it is a incredible fact if may read something even a 3000 words per minute. There is a real evidence anyway that read 10x more than normal speed in a minute is possible (250-400wpm) with reasonable training.

So just I would like try the concepts explained on this methods to obtain a better reading speed to save more time while I am studying, because it is my goal. My speed reading actually is just 400wpm with very reasonable comprehension, 600wpm dismiss so much yest my comprehension (by while). Any improvement ahead what I will obtain I will share here.

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I’m not sure about that. Maybe there are some persons that are able to read with extraordinary speed. But does this really imply that speed reading is possible with reasonable training?

In my opinion, one of the main obstacles is the visual perception system. Please take a look at the anatomy of the eye, especially the retina.

According to Wikipedia, the entire retina contains about 7 million cones and 75 to 150 million rods. But there are only around one million ganglion cells that transfer informations to the brain, so there are cells in between that do some kind of processing and compression. Usually the resulting resolution in the peripheral vision field is too low to recognize words. Please take a look at this picture on Wikipedia:

You can try it yourself. Look at a word near the center of a paragraph and try to recognize words at the edge of the paragraph without glimpsing.

A fixation needs some time, which further decreases the limit for reading speed.

Is it possible to train the retina to recognize text in a bigger area with one fixation? I have no idea. Let’s assume it isn’t, but there are people with a special retina. Maybe they have more ganglion cells than usual so they can indeed read text in the peripheral vision field. Or their ganglion cells are more evenly distributed instead concentrated at the fovea. This would lead to the situation that only few people with a special anatomy are able to learn highspeed reading.

Please correct me if I got something wrong. I’m not a physician.

64

I’m delighted that this thread is still going. Most of what I’ve learned long ago in the technical world has long been eclipsed by such modern miracles as VHS.

There have been a number of new topics and I will try to touch each one.

The most recent has been the anatomy of the eye and its capacity to jump as it reads as well as the limitations of what could possibly be seen by peripheral vision.

To start I must go back to the EW course and remind people that the basics involved following the finger tip as is moved along the line. This reiterates the fact that practicing will improve performance. The more you type the better you get, the more you follow the finger the better your eye will get at keeping up. And the more you follow your finger the more used to seeing the text you will get. I got faster each day month after month until I was enjoying 600 to 700 wpm. I say enjoyed since when I pushed beyond this to 1,100 wpm the effects fell off rapidly. Hardly a surprise. I enjoyed speed reading fiction because it made the description pop up into a whole picture at once, quite amazing. This is not the best way to read every book, not even every fiction book.

Now there is nothing magical about this. How much does anyone past grade school practice their reading to improve speed? I’m sure that if each of us pushed we could read faster but all would give up a unanimous “So what?”. Adults know what they want to bother reading and what not to. We filter like crazy. We hardly ever read beyond a walking pace.

I think I have written out here the EW exercises I used back then and would be happy to do it again if asked. They are shorter than most of these posts. If they are still on this board a link might be inserted. (??)

The limitations of peripheral vision is quite important but I think overstated. Though the eye will jerk to each spot on the line of text it will see lets say eight to fifteen letters before moving on. Knowing how far to hop to the next picture is what we learn to do when we learn to read. I don’t know but I’ll bet the number of hops per line would vary depending on the readers experience with the text. The posts on these studies did not tell us whether eyes were tested to see if they moved the same for a variety of texts.

There is a great book, author of Godel-Escher-Bach escapes me, called The Mind’s I (I think). In it he describes among other things our mastery of text and how the brain manages. Here he has several lines of examples where in the actual paragraph he starts misspelling wodrs while leaivng the fisrt and last leterts correct. The sentences tell you what is wrong with the text as you read but you understand the garbled text without slowing down. Examples get more elaborate but make the point that your experience with words no longer requires them to be seen slowly or completely. As such the reliance or speculations on peripheral vision should be less important. The reliability of the reader to understand clumps of words that are taken up in each jerk of the eye is what matters. This is being exploited as the speed improves.

Another topic is sub-vocalization. In high-school a teacher once went through painful detail showing us how to avoid this by having us each hold a pencil between our lips. Talk about your lips getting tired reading. In my TV and radio career we learned (?) that the story of subliminal visual messages was explained by

A) subliminal is actually a synonym for invisible and hence virtually not there.

B)the movie theater trying it out also had heavy advertising pushing the food they were selling.

I believe that once an adult learns a word they are long past sounding it out. The fact that we can understand accelerated speech in commercials reinforces this idea. We should be able to read at least as fast as they can talk to us.

A useful observation would be that the solution lies in a three or four dimensional graph between

A)the limitations of [speed] reading technique and its rate for some kind of text and

B)the variety of text available and

C)the qualifications of a reader for a given text as well as

D)the skill the user has with the technique; The worst speed reader could do better than the fastest of the sound-out-each-word method.

All these make up a vast sea in which each of our disparate posters are paddling and claiming the truth lies just a few stokes away. A more analytical version of this seascape would be useful as would our fearless administrator’s efforts to map out all our hapless rafts and detritus.

This is still fun so let me know what you think.

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66

I find it interesting that you were able to locate accelerated speech sources or apps. The recent advancement in the speed came from the discovery of what parts of the words we hear make them understandable. A tape or disk player came out (years ago now) that electronically removed much of the vowel sounds as it sped up the “tape” speed. Surprisingly the understand-ability did not suffer as it would if you just sped the speech way up with just fast-forward. This still is counter-intuitive as you would imagine that such carved up words would be less understandable.

Naturally the champion fast talker cannot come close to these speeds since he must do mechanically what the electronics do at near light speed. Also the speaker’s output would not have the characteristics the improved electronic voice has that I described.

I think with reading we are again at the limits of the mechanical, physiological limits of what the eye can scan regardless of what the mind could do with it. One of the links in a recent post above had an app that blasted text at you but one word at a time. This to see the limits of comprehension at speed. Readsy was the name. I did not experiment since I have enough nightmares from retention of vision from electronic games. I hope you will try it and report your findings.

The two ends of the scale are what people can be taught, expecting results from practice and what some gifted enthusiast might manage. The enthusiast can only give us some idea of the upper limits but must be tested properly and skeptically. Thanks for letting us know your experiences.

68

Wow, I’m impressed! My normal reading speed is somewhere between 200 and 250 wpm.

Some time ago I tried to learn high speed reading with 1500-2000 wpm, but failed miserably :grin: At the moment I’m working on a new approach that bypasses the physiological limitations. It should increase reading speed by a modest amount of 50 to 100 percent, yet without comprehension loss. But I think it’s too early for a big announcement.

Update: And … I failed again. Speed reading obviously is too high for me :dizzy_face:

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71

I worked through Rudin’s book on Analysis. Some weeks a page a day was optimistic.
It’s a wonderful book. I got a tremendous amount out of it.

From the review cited by @Josh

“The groups consisted of champion speed readers, fast college readers, successful professionals whose jobs required a lot of reading, and students who had scored highest on speed reading tests. Carver found that of his superstars, none could read faster than 600 words per minute with more than 75% retention of information.”

This fits with my experience. I’ll blitz through a newspaper or a light opinion piece but if it requires serious attention 300 wpm or less is typical.

Once again, I just not convinced of the usefulness of speed in reading. Time is rarely the actual issue. When people say they don’t have ‘time’ often what they mean is they don’t have the energy.

I don’t feel the need to blitz through light fiction anymore than I do to watch a movie on FF.

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74

I don’t know why it is hard for you.
Google “Evelyn Wood Speed Reading” for the basics.

Then, when your speed is up from lets say 200 wpm to at least 400 wpm, use these sites:

or

My personal favourite is Zapreader, but just try both and see what you like. The idea is that you paste texts into those sites and then read them word for word. If you can do that; increase the speed.
And again; and again, until it becomes too fast for you.

Then double that last speed and try again. I am serious here.
Then add half of the last speed and do it agin. Really? Yes!

Do the last 2 exercises at least 5 times. They are that important.
Because by then you have read the text lots and lots of times you know them (almost) by heart.

So the double and triple reading on your maximum speed is to get your brain accustomed to the FACT that your brain can actually read at these speeds (when they are highly familiar).

Depending on the complexity of the text I can read 1,000 wpm and more (but not much). 1000 wpm I can only do with subjects that I am highly familiar with.
Normal speed reading is around 600-800 wpm I guess.
And give me a text on the latest findings in quantum mechanics and my speed will drop below 200 wpm.

Forget ANY claim about 1,000 wpm and more for unknown texts and unknown subjects. That is marketing bs.
The current world record under controlled circumstances is 1246 wpm:

And now, we wait until somebody mentions Howard Berg :joy::joy::joy:.

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76

Any book I can speed read generally isn’t worth reading. The most useful books makes me stop and mull over the information and try apply it to multiple contexts. If I’m not doing that it’s likely I won’t remember the information or use it across multiple domains. It’s the same with speeding up audiobooks, I once listened to an audiobook (“the power of habit” I believe it was called) that had so much fluff in it that I could put it on 3x speed without problem as there was nothing in it of value that made me stop and think after the 4th chapter just anecdotes that loosely applied.

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77

I usually speed up audio and video from 1.2 to 2.5 times the normal speed, depending on the speaker. I think my brain has been learning how to process speech faster.

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78

For presentations and semi-scripted things like that I think it’s very useful to get through all the wasted yip-yapping but if it’s an audiobook about something technical or philosophical I’ll naturally want to think about the content and often pause it to think about applications. Normally, I gauge how useful the book is by how much I’m able to speed it up haha for example I’d never speed up Taleb as he gives me far too many ideas, and I found myself pausing it constantly to write down ideas on a walk or to just walk and think

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79

You can also train your brain in speed reading apps
For speed reading and memory you can try this

http://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jerminal.reader.reader

80

Mind mapping and memory techniques can produce astounding results, yet it is not mainstream. Vedic maths can produce astonishing results(I’ve tried it out for myself) but is not very well known.

He also says;

What’s more, most of the reading speeds advertised by these courses exceed the maximum reading speed of the human eyeball, which is about 300 words per minute (Carroll, 2003).

I can read informative passages comfortably at 700-750 wpm with comprehension at 80%

Practice makes perfect. The people Buzan talks about devoted their whole life to speed reading. If you are busy and can’t put in the intense practice then you can’t expect to reccive the rewards.

We have no idea how much the brain can do. So let us not put an embargo on the brain’s limits.

2 Likes
81

Apologies if this has already been posted, but an academic article that again indicates that speed-reading, including the RSVP method, do not really work.

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/speed_reading.html

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82

This is an old article and I am new here.
Nevertheless, I’ll offer my 2 cents worth.

I, too, was an EW graduate - circa 1973. Yes, I am that old. LOL
From the first introductory lesson, when they advertised I would double my reading speed in 2 hours, I found that everything they said was true. My reading speed in that first lesson jumped from 325 to almost 800 and my retention from 60% to almost 75%.

Eventually I took the full course. (As I recall, it was $500 back then and ran 6 weeks.)
After several months I wound up at 1,700 wpm and around 85% retention.

Through my 20s I read 700+ books per year. Unfortunately, mostly fiction. LOL

In my 30s to 50s I got lazy and lost my skills. About age 55 or so I began practicing and, today, (at age 70), I read only electronic books. My reading speed has returned, but my retention has slipped. Last test I took it was 78%.

I write A.I. software for a living. Technical material is digestible for me at around 500 wpm.

Speed reading is a life-changer- at least it has been for me. Every night I consumer the equivalent of about 200 print pages - about 50,000 words. All shallow reading - meant to triage things I want to study - so it only takes me about 30-45 minutes.

BTW, I think the EW organization is still around but has has not kept pace. I’d recommend another choice for anyone who is interested.

PS: Studying the Memory Palace approach now to aid in my productivity.

1 Like
83

How is it that you gained more retention when you sped up?

84

Think of it as two different trainings.
Logically, as your speed goes up, retention goes down.
So, then you concentrate on retention, which lowers your speed.
So, over time both inch their way up.
BTW, the first lesson produces such a jump in both areas because both areas were so weak to begin with.

One does not AUTOMATICALLY increase retention when reading faster.
It is a learned skill.

Truly, it is just like people here COMMITTING to LEARN the Memory Palace.
Just a different way of doing it.

Hope that makes sense.

Dave
PS: There is no free lunch.

3 Likes
85

I’m actually on my 2nd month of training on Breakthrough Rapid Reading by Peter Kump and I think they’re almost the same with the EW because he was a director there. Do you have any tips on how I should move forward with the drills? I think I can read fast, but my recall is not as good as my speed.

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86

Well, to be honest, it was SO LONG AGO… I actually do not recall the drills.

Other than the occasional academic book, most of my reading is electronic. My favorite way to read is the Kindle app on my iPhone or computer.

The reason is that the key to getting real speed, is to read the entire width of the line right down the center of the page.

The iPhone is just natural for that and, the computer is easily adjustable.

Obviously, the training begins with stopping the sub-vocalization - which can be surprisingly difficult. At least it was/is for me. Just kills your speed - and surprisingly - does not seem to do much for retention, despite the going slower.

But, after that, it becomes simply reading more physical space with each glance.

BTW, one change from reading a physical book is that (obviously) you cannot move your finger down/across the page. The good news is that you can start right away and read down the center of the page simply by increasing the font size to get LESS characters on each line.

Then, as you are able to CLEARLY SEE more width, you can lower the size to expand the words-per-line.

IMHO, THAT is where the speed comes from.
Of course, your mileage may differ.

Hope this helps.

Dave

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87

Thanks for this, Dave.

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88

The article is from 2016 I believe. So 5 years old isn’t that old especially considering the topic.

No offense intended, but I don’t equate contradictory anecdotal evidence to be equivalent to a scientific study.

I’m curious as to how you know your retention level? Books (especially fiction) generally don’t come with a set of detailed questions designed to ascertain your retention of the material.

Now if you have heard of a scientifically controlled study that shows that a speed-reader with at least your abilities (I’ve heard of even greater claims regarding the number of WPM read) with about 85% retention, then could you please refer me to the article? I don’t recall any controlled study which has verified such claims.

I think that speed-readers with such abilities could do everyone a great favor by volunteering for a strictly controlled scientific study at a respectable researcher’s lab. Then these questions could finally be settled, and such volunteers could point to scientifically replicated studies backing their claims.

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