Does speed reading work?

A team of psychologists examines whether speed reading actually works – whether reading at an increased speed leads to a loss in understanding or not (Association for Psychological Science, January 19, 2016).

Speed reading was introduced in 1959 as a way to train readers to take in more information more quickly without sacrificing accuracy and understanding. Speed readers take in more visual information at a single glance and suppress the inner speech that often occurs when reading silently word-for-word. With the increase in digital text, another method has become popular – rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP). The claim is that, free from the need for eye movement, people can read more quickly than usual.

In the 1980s researchers studied speed reading by comparing the comprehension levels among three groups: (1) speed readers, (2) people who read at a normal speed, and (3) people who were told to skim the text. Results showed that speed readers understood the text better than skimmers, but not as well as normal-paced readers.

The normal pace of most readers is 200-400 words per minute. Skimming is about 600-700 words per minute. The World Championship Speed Reading Competition tests speed and comprehension, and the top contestants read about 1,000-4,000 words per minute with about 50% comprehension or above, although there are speed readers who can read up to 10,000 words per minute.

This recent study addresses the question whether there is a unique form of reading in which speed and comprehension are both high. They also sought to determine whether people can achieve speed and comprehension with little or no practice by using special technologies. The team from the University of California in San Diego, the University of Victoria, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Washington University in St. Louis will publish their results in the Psychological Science in the Public Interest journal in May 2016.

Reading is based on language, so it is not a purely visual process. However the premise behind speed reading is that it is possible to use peripheral vision to simultaneously read large segments of a page, perhaps even a whole page, instead of one word at a time.

Researchers first studied eye movement. Normal English-language readers span the distance of 7 letters, and about 30% of the time readers move past, or sweep to, the next word to the following word, especially if the word is short – but the word is still processed. About 10% to 15% of the time, the researchers note, skilled readers make regressions, moving back to the previous word, especially if the word is long.

Researchers also studied word identification and perception. In this part of the study the researchers found that the perceptual span of readers is limited – readers cannot obtain information from a very large area of the visual field, but instead they process text in the centre of their vision. This is contrary to the claim of speed readers.

Then researchers addressed the context of speed reading technologies to gain more textual information – i.e whether people need to move their eyes to read and understand. They found that people do need to move their eyes to place them over the region that they want to process in order to process the information more efficiently.

Reading speeds of speed readers varies considerably. They found that reading speed is  tied to language-processing abilities rather than the ability to control eye movement. Therefore they also looked at how people recognize words, the role of speaking in your head during silent reading, and what happens when a word had more than one meaning.

Lastly they studied comprehension and understanding – of individual words and sentences, but also total understanding of the information, and the new speed reading technologies.

The results showed that ‘there is no such magic bullet.’ There is a trade-off between speed and accuracy in reading. Increasing the speed with which a reader encounters words has consequences for how well the words are understood and remembered. In some reading, speed is the goal, rather than comprehension. They also found that skimming is an important skill.  The researchers state that ‘in many other situations, however, it will be necessary to slow down to a normal pace in order to achieve good comprehension.’ Moreover, they say that readers need to re-read parts of the text to ensure better understanding.

In conclusion, the researchers state that the way to maintain high comprehension and read text faster is to practice reading and to become more skilled at language (e.g through increased vocabulary). ‘This is because,’ they say, ‘language skill is at the heart of reading speed.’

http://psi.sagepub.com/content/17/1/4.full?ijkey=0GSjhNaccRKTY&keytype=ref&siteid=sppsi

MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).