Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

scotthyoung.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 170 posts

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#91

Post by zelly »

missingrib wrote: post #35
Terretta wrote: post #15

On “subvocalization” ... > It’s simply not possible to comprehend what you’re reading and avoid using that inner voice. So reading faster means being able to use this inner voice faster, not eliminating it. To further that, expert speed readers who were studied also subvocalized, they just did it faster. I’ve seen this argued elsewhere, and am not convinced they’ve found readers who do not subvocalize to study. Most…

I just wanted to chime in. I used to read solely visually (from what I remember) but now I cannot stop subvocalizing. I was already a neurotic person but I genuinely think about this every time I read now and it's kind of distressing. It's also very hard to focus on what I'm reading because I'm constantly thinking on a meta level about how I'm reading. I find this is less intense if I'm reading something online and n…

It's good, don't try to stop. If you subvocalize, you comprehend what you read better.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#92

Post by tsimionescu »

zhte415 wrote: post #70
enz wrote: post #45

I can understand a lot of Japanese words written in kanjis without knowing how to pronounce them. So I am basically forced to read without any subvocalization and it’s pretty tough to understand any text longer than 5 lines. It feels like trying to understand a mathematical proof that has been written only with mathematical symbols.

Wouldn't a mathematical proof not (only) written with mathematical symbols be much harder to read?

Why would replacing (some) symbols with words make the text harder to read?

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#93

Post by WA »

NateEag wrote: post #85

The full article claims that it's impossible to reduce saccades by reading multiple lines simultaneously. I know that claim is false because I have experienced reading an entire book by perceiving two to four lines simultaneously. I've only had that happen once, on incredibly easy double-spaced material, but humans are capable of it. Note that I am a natural speed reader and aphantasiac - those may be contributing fa…

But what's your recall on the text/information? I bet this is easier with simple, repetitive books that have lots of unnecessary filler words.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#94

Post by WA »

ncmncm wrote: post #56

Wrong guy is wrong. It is possible to speed-read TFA with no loss of comprehension, because it is information-light. Most things available to read are, and when you are obliged to look at them, often a glance at each paragraph tells you all you need to know. Things that are really worth reading are information-dense. Then, the time to think about what is presented dominates, and the time to take in words is negligibl…

You don't talk about speed reading, you talk about skimming.

The claim of speed readers is usually: Read 900 words per minute or more with no loss of comprehension.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#95

Post by [deleted] »

godelski wrote: post #68
StavrosK wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read a book that could literally be summed up in a sentence (it was called "the asshole rule" or something similar, and the gist was "don't hire assholes"). There was nothing at all in addition to that, except for a bunch of feel-good anecdotes and specious data that misrepresented correlation for causation. I hated it so much that I made a (now defunct) website where I would post summaries of these books so people…

Sounds like the book was doing something different though. Why should you believe that one sentence? The author has to sell you on the idea and demonstrate why it is a bad idea to hire assholes. A singular sentence isn't going to be enough to convince you, and it shouldn't be.

[deleted]

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#96

Post by true_religion »

enz wrote: post #45

I can understand a lot of Japanese words written in kanjis without knowing how to pronounce them. So I am basically forced to read without any subvocalization and it’s pretty tough to understand any text longer than 5 lines. It feels like trying to understand a mathematical proof that has been written only with mathematical symbols.

That is odd to me because I can read French fairly fluently, but I can’t pronounce the words.

I took a summer course a few decades ago, and kept up with the literature portion as that could be practiced alone, but never found anyone to practice speaking with.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#97

Post by tsimionescu »

Mirioron wrote: post #64
Terr_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. Maybe an experiment could involve a fictional ideogram language, and compare peoples subvocalizing (or lack thereof) versus their native one.

> I wonder if there's anyone out there who can read a non-alphabetic language (e.g. Chinese) but doesn't even know how to pronounce what they're reading. This is actually how many people learn Japanese. They get an anki deck with kanji and their meanings and learn from that. The decks might have some pronunciations of the kanji, but typically not all of the pronunciations (or people don't learn them). This leads to a…

But that wouldn't help with avoiding subvocalizing. If you know one pronunciation, even if it's not the correct one, you can still subvocalize.

One thing I noticed about myself is that I often subvocalize large numbers (say, 64521) in my native language, especially when I'm reading a language I'm not fluent in.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#98

Post by tsimionescu »

InternetOfStuff wrote: post #82
Terretta wrote: post #15

On “subvocalization” ... > It’s simply not possible to comprehend what you’re reading and avoid using that inner voice. So reading faster means being able to use this inner voice faster, not eliminating it. To further that, expert speed readers who were studied also subvocalized, they just did it faster. I’ve seen this argued elsewhere, and am not convinced they’ve found readers who do not subvocalize to study. Most…

I don't think I subvocalise, I read way faster than I can speak. There's certainly ideas flowing through my mind as I read, but not sounds. It feels like a mixture between words, thoughts and emotions, not a stream of (silently) spoken words. I bought a book on speed reading because I was dissatisfied with my "slow" reading, only to discover that according to their tests I was way up there in both speed and comprehen…

Subvocalizing is much faster than speaking. In general, subvocalizing refers to pronouncing the words in your head, which can be picked up by observing neural activity in the vocal chords.

Even if your vocal chords were doing the full range of motion (they are not), when speaking, you also have to open and close your mouth, move your tongue, take in breath and expel it etc. It's much more than simply some activity in your vocal chords.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#99

Post by Intermernet »

leetcrew wrote: post #55
hanoz wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> couldn't get a single word out without a typo, and would frequently hunt down other places in the code so they could copy paste that 6 character variable name The latter seems a good strategy for coping with the former, does it not?

it's more like a pathological workaround. it's similar to people who spend years doing "hunt and peck" typing. if you practice enough, you can get up to a decent speed, but you would have been much better off taking a couple weeks to become a mediocre touch typist.

I was a mediocre touch typist, and then spent many years doing hands on, IT support. I usually had to type on other people's keyboards while I was offset to one side, or even on the other side of the desk. I'm now a terrible touch typist, but a pretty good upside down, one handed typist!

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#100

Post by Intermernet »

kortex wrote: post #52
Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. This applies to surprisingly many tasks in life. That said, I've been pushing to hit 100 wpm typing with minimal typos for years just because it's a nice round number and I keep ending up just shy. Character typos aren't even that big of a deal, as I find a good chunk of mistakes are actually "thought-os" where I type in the completely wrong giraffe. So being able to recover dynamicall…

Pretty sure you meant giraffe instead of giraffe, but I may be misaken ;-)
Post reply on HN