Critical Analysis: Speed Reading

In this post-modern era information is literally at our fingertips. We're being overwhelmed by such an enormous abundance of knowledge that the problem isn't what to read but when to read. Being a student and a knowledge-hungry person myself the idea of increasing my reading speed (initially) sounded like a holy grail to me. Over the years loads of speed reading courses and apps have been developed promising increased reading speeds. Is reading 1000+ words per minute really realistic or is it too good to be true?  

Before we can look at speed reading we must understand how we define reading and how the reading process normally takes place.

What Reading Actually Is 

Reading is the act of processing textual information in order to reconstruct the original meaning behind each word.  Despite the fact that most of us have learned to read silently over the years we mustn’t forget that reading isn’t a purely visual process. It is fundamentally based on spoken language. The best illustration of this is how we teach the skill of reading to our children. According to Western standards we tend to learn our children to read aloud, by converting written text into spoken words (this may vary depending on culture and educational system), gradually children will develop the ability to read silently.  

How Reading Works

Before we head over to the reading process allow me to refresh your knowledge on the visual field. Our vision of field consists of 3 main ranges of vision: the foveal range (centre region with the highest acuity), parafoveal (middle region with moderate acuity) and peripheral (farthest region from fixation, with lowest acuity). Acuity will decrease as the distance from the position of fixation increases.   

(source)

When we read our eyes continually make rapid movements called saccades. They allow us to move the fovea to the word we wish to process since most of the words we want to read need to be in the foveal range in order to be understood. The length of these ballistic eye movements is generally speaking 2 visual degrees and when reading silently a typical saccade only takes 30 milliseconds. Since the eye moves extremely fast when preforming a saccade no information will be processed because the perceived text is simply put  just too blurry. Our eyes maintain a state of fixation (in this point in time the eye is standing relatively still) for about 200-300 milliseconds in between saccades. During the period of fixation new visual information will be acquired, that’s also why the length of fixation rates may vary based on how familiar the reader is with the subject of the text, legibility of the of the text (e.g. light/dark contrast) and several other factors. 

Different Methods of Speed Reading

When reading the majority of educated adults reads at an average pace of 200-400 words per minute (WPM). Various speed reading courses promise results ranging from a 50% speed increase to a WPM rates of a 1000 or more. Is this achievable without losing comprehension.  Let’s take a look at some speed reading methods and how to hope to accelerate the reading process.   

• Making use of the peripheral vision:
  Some courses have suggested making use of the peripheral vision to read larger segments of text instead of reading on word at a time.
  However this is biologically and physically impossible since acuity is too low. This is one of the reasons why our eyes preform movement to move the foveal vision in the first place.
   
• Eliminating Sub-Vocalization:  
  Another way to vastly increase your reading speed, according to some courses, is to eliminate sub-vocalization (internal speech made by your brain when reading).
  Trying to suppress silent speech will result in a loss of comprehension. When people recognize words visually they access the sounds of those words in order to comprehend them.    
  
• Rapid Serial Visual Processing (RSVP):
  
  Most modern day application that hope to offer and increased reading speed fundamentally make use of RSVP. Each single word is independently flashed at an (adjustable) fixed rate. Since position of fixation remains the same, the eyes won’t have to preform ‘excessive’ eye movement thus resulting in a faster reading speed.
  
  Science has proved that in general it just doesn’t work that well. When we normally read our brain doesn’t necessarily read all the words and makes a clear distinction between function words and content words and puts more emphasis on the latter. When utilizing applications based on RSVP on the other hand the software flashes every single word, which results in our brain having to process every single word. This makes it extremely exhausting to make use of this kind of speed reading.
  
  Another huge downside to RSVP speed reading is the inability to make regression (moving backward in the text to a previous word).  Trained readers tend to make regressions 10-15% of the time and is vital for solid comprehension.

General Conclusions

Making use of the above methods can increase reading speed but will come at the cost of comprehension. If we boil down speed reading and techniques that are often advertised I can conclude that it’s skimming.
This doesn’t mean these techniques won’t help you up your WPM by a couple hundred words but to maintain maximum comprehension they’re not advisable.  

Only practice is our true grail.

The best advice I can give you from the research I’ve done on this subject is to do it the old-fashioned way and by that I mean raw practice. The more you are exposed to a certain word, the faster your brain will be able to process it.  My personal conclusion would be that there is no holy grail when it comes to improving reading speeds, if there was one we would’ve found it by now. Only practice is our true grail.

References

•  So Much to Read, So Little Time
•  How do we Read and Can Speed Reading Help?
•  Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing 

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