Photoreading Mental photography

General Memory Chat
1

As anyone tried photoreading or mental photography?
I would love to hear your reviews since most of them on the internet are biased
Thanks in advance

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Questions about Photoreading
Does Zox Pro Work?
Help please: how to memorize a book word for word reading only once
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Are you referring to something like zoxpro? Check out these links:

3

thanks i appreciate it
but how about photo reading?
Also i will give mental photography a shot and i will update post daily´
because im lazy i will use this thread

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I don’t know what “photo reading” is, but I just went to photoreading.com where it says:

That's why so many people just like you are using the Ferrari-style of reading called PhotoReading. It blasts printed materials to the brain at phenomenal rates, a page a second. You actually "mentally photograph" the page at 25,000 words a minute.

I’m really skeptical about these kinds of claims. It implies that one is going to read 25,000 words per minute, which is impossible.

At the top of the page, it says:

PhotoReading: Learn and absorb reading material 3 times faster than you can now

So is it three times faster than my current speed or 25,000 words per minute?

NASA’s research also says that it doesn’t work:

PhotoReading is a technique developed by Paul Scheele that claims to increase reading rate to 25,000 words per minute (Scheele, 1993). Users of the technique claim to be able to PhotoRead an entire book within 10 minutes, and during that process develop a relatively complete or sufficient understanding of its contents (see Appendix B for copies of recent advertisements). PhotoReading is not speed-reading, but rather claims to rely on an unconscious component of the mind.

[…]

Conclusions
These results clearly indicate that there is no benefit to using the PhotoReading technique. The extremely rapid reading rates claimed by PhotoReaders were not observed; indeed the reading rates were generally comparable to those for normal reading. Moreover, the PhotoReading expert showed an increase in reading time with the PhotoReading technique in comparison to normal reading. This increase in reading time was accompanied by a decrease in text comprehension. These results were found for two standardized tests of text comprehension and for three matched sets of expository texts. The decrease in reading comprehension as result of using the PhotoReading technique also seemed to depend on question type. Comprehension accuracy decreased 30 percent on the conceptual questions as a result of using the PhotoReading technique, compared to a decrease of 10 percent on the text-based questions. This result makes sense in light of current theories of reading comprehension (i.e., Kintsch, 1998). Accordingly, comprehension on the text-based level requires less effort than does a deeper understanding reflected by performance on the conceptual questions (e.g., McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996; McNamam & Kintsch, 1996).

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5

I appreciate your answer very much, however i still feel the need to try it.
Do you know any techniques that could greatly improve your memory
(besides memory palace/journey or other association techniques)
the only reason why I don’t want those is because they are quite slow and exhausting

Also i found this method called military photographic memory training at

6

NO.

About 15 years ago, I begged my mom to buy me the photoreading program. Eventually, she did. It is a series of steps of how to get the most out of books in a short period of time. One of those is looking “through” or “beyond” a book so that there is a “blip page” in the center, like when you stare at the wall and point your index fingers at each other before your eyes to you get this floating “finger piece/dot.”

That step does nothing. How do I know? Because the results that are achieved from the “photoreading full mind system” or whatever it is called can be fully explained by the other steps. What are these other steps?

One is to “determine exactly what you want from a given book” Then, look through the table of contents for a chapter heading that looks like it might have that kind of information. Flip to that chapter and read the first sentence of every paragraph until you find one that looks like it’s talking about what you want to learn. Then “super read” that page, which means look at the lines really quick until you find sentences that look like they’re talking about what you need. Then “Dip” in, (This is how you use the twin skills Super Read and Dip) and read those sentences. Now you’re done with the book! Well, wait – there is one more step. You have to “photoread” the book so that the whole book is absorbed by your mind. Look past the book and let the words blur. Get that “blip page” in the center, and flip through the pages at 1 page per second. Focus on the space BETWEEN the words - this helps your unconscious mind to comprehend the entire book. It also helps to photoread the book upside down and/or backwards.

A dictionary with two columns of words per page is suggested to be photoread. Scheele says, " after you photoread the book, think of ANY word and its definition, and imagine where the word is on the page that it appears. Because you are using your whole mind, which is so much more creative than the approaches of typical conscious thought that we are used to, the position of the word may appear as a mirror image left or right, or mirrored top to bottom, or in the same spot on the opposite page, and if this happens, rest assured that the photoreading has been successful.

So, if the word of choice appears in one of these areas, then the photoreading has been a success:

l l l
l x x l x x l
l l l
l l l
l x x l x x l
l l l

Josh pointed out the research above. Good of him to do, and I’ll tell you that I was 11 when I realized that this was a scam and it made me very, very, very sad because I had put an incredible amount of hope and effort into making this work. Was I just the most astute child out there? Nah, not really. I think I was just unbiased! And I admitted (in dismay) that the photoreading step added nothing when I realized that that was the case.

Sorry.

Please don’t take this as effrontery, but I believe that the reason you still want to try photoreading after Josh’s post (and after this post as well) can be summed up by your own words here:

“The only reason why I don’t want those is because they are quite slow and exhausting.”

Think of any skill you’ve ever seen anyone have where you thought “Wow, that’s impressive – I really wish that I could do that too!” and ask the question, “did they learn this overnight?” Or ask the question, “Did they pay someone to ship this to their door?” Sadly, the development of sound skill is always a chore.

I wanted to photoread, too.

Sorry :cry:

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7

^^^^^

That diagram I made above didn’t work. But basically, anywhere the word appears fits the bill.

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Thanks man i really like that you took the time to write all that,i know like 99% that it is a scam but since i wont be paying for it i figure why not, also steve pavlina has a review on it and i considered him a legit source

Also what about the other one

9

You’re welcome :slight_smile:

I didn’t realize you won’t be paying for it. Well in that case, there could be some useful ideas in there as far as skipping to the chapters you need, etc., Moving your eyes across the page quickly…speed reading stuff. You just won’t be able to photoread.

What is the “other one?”

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10

I don’t think 25,000 words per minute works for anyone, except if it’s pure skimming.

Maybe 5,000 words per minute is possible, with 60% comprehension. We know from anecdotal evidence that Kim Peek went for higher than that.

But also depends heavily on the text, if it’s familiar or not, if it’s difficult or not.

I mean if you’re going for more than 1,000 words per minute, it’s almost impossible to comprehend complex problems&solutions of special relativity or quantum mechanics texts or any heavy textbook with formulas and equations,

But simple novels are more of a ‘light’ reading, so probably 6000 per minute (=100 words per second) could be comfortable, though with very minimal comprehension of all details and factoids . But the central gist could be comprehended and outlied.

I am sure many lawyers or teachers use speed-reading a lot, due to the amount of paperwork they have to deal with. But in science and research, accuracy and clarity is more important than speed, as Anthony said.
Many famous scientists like Steven Hawking are probably slow-readers, but that doesn’t prevent them from being a genius.

Nodas

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Hi, there’s any book that helps improvement memory, something like brain management claims (bring sunconscious memory from books , vídeos, real life, etc)???

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If you’re looking for books on memory improvement, see this PDF and the memory improvement books FAQ.

For memory improvement ideas that don’t involve techniques, you might be interested in the natural ways to improve memory page, which also has resources on sleep and memory, exercise and memory, stress and memory, and food and memory. Exercise and sleep are two areas that seem especially promising.

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13

It is basically stone soup; the photoreading is the stone, and all the other steps are the actual ingredients.

That said, it can be fun.

Also, isn’t the Guiness record 25,000 wpm? Though Howard Berg never claimed photoreading.

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I successfully begged my parents to buy this system for me when I was nine or ten. How disappointing that the methods were obviously fraudulent. One is told to look at the pages of a book such that no information is absorbed, and then they are told to “super-read and dip,” that is, skim for a particular topic you had in mind, and then actually read that part. In the end, you know exactly as much as anyone else who’d skimmed and then read the part they care about. I did note the creativity of their chapter, subheading, block organization which facilitates this approach, whereas most books generally have every page formatted in the same way. Then, one might consider the “photoreading” element to have contributed to their relatively high success with skimming for a subtopic, when the student is explicitly and only instructed to practice and use the techniques on that very book formatted for their facilitation.

But that’s just one little boy’s opinion.

I just scrolled up and learned that I had typed out this exact same post years ago.

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15

I don’t believe that claim. Wikipedia says:

Critics point out that it is possible to beat some speed reading world records by reading a pre-read or pre-memorized text, flipping the pages as fast as possible without reading it. The Guinness Speed Reading World Record Standards are not known and they have terminated adding speed readers to its honor list. In 2015, Memoriad, the World Mental Sports Federation, set the rules for “Speed Reading World Record Standards” in order to prevent unclear claims.

It mentions the claims of 25,000 wpm and 80,000 wpm, but there aren’t any credible references outside of people who make the claim. If people can really do it, there are many opportunities to prove it.

I think that if there really were a way to read that fast, schools would race to adopt the methods, and everyone would have heard of them. Many people would be reading 1,500 page books in 30 minutes.

Related discussions: speed-reading

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I doubt that. Schools don’t want you to reach your full potential. Or half your potential. There’s a lot of tall poppy syndrome going around there.

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I’m still not convinced. :slight_smile:

I think that even if many schools don’t care about their students, there are enough teachers and schools out there that do care, that someone would have been able to prove this kind of ability by now.

There are high schools in the US that charge as much as $75,000-$130,000 per year. Schools like that have a strong incentive to produce results in order to attract money from parents. If all it takes is a few hundred or few thousand dollars for a school to learn the secret of teaching people how to read 10+ books the size of War and Peace per day, I suspect that the world would be overflowing with superhuman readers already.

TV shows and “content creators” also have strong incentives to promote superhuman feats like this, if they can back it up with convincing evidence.

NASA cares about humans reaching their full potentials, and their research showed that it doesn’t work.

Also, nations are competitive. I think it would be possible to find at least one country somewhere that would have implemented it as part of their national curriculum, because it would give a huge advantage if they could boost the number of geniuses that their country could produce.

All it would take to convince me is one person who can demonstrate that they can read 25,000+ words per minute, but every case I’ve seen of superhuman reading has turned out to be a scam. For example, search the forum for Bijay Shahi.

I’m an open minded person. Teach me how to read 25,000+ words per minute, and I will enthusiastically promote the course/book/method that teaches the technique.

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18

Maybe if there was an interface chip that could link our brains and eyes. I’d like to try. I’m not kidding. There are so many books I want to read, so many languages I want to learn, but life is too short.

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19

Hi all!

It’s been a while, but I would be glad to share my insights on it.

There are a few photoreading gurus in Russia and here in Ukraine I heard about them and had an opportunity to read about their systems. Photoreading is mostly based on the idea that your brain actually remember everything you experience with, but just can’t get these memories. The same concept stands behind the rumors about the photographic memory.

According to the modern neuroscience, it’s simply not true. There are a lot of “filters” in your short-term memory to avoid memorizing the information your brain finds worthless.

While our brains do really possess impressive processing speed, it’s not the same with memorizing everything. We all know here that long-term memorization requires some chemical reactions to happen, spending dopamine on them.

So, I would bet 9 against 1 that photoreading is just a scamming.

However, there is a photoreading technique by Ramon Campayo, based on avoiding subvocalization and creating “mental video”. His recommendations are the same with all basic speed reading techniques and 100% legit.

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