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I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

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Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#151

Post by dorfsmay »

GolDDranks wrote: post #21
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, as a non-native English speaker who mainly interface English through written language and rarely via spoken language, find this fascinating. I am able to read articles and blog posts in English rapidly and with full comprehension, but I'm totally NOT able to speak out loud most of the words. I find that it's mostly through visual medium the words "come" to me.

That's interesting. I wonder if subvocalisation has been studied in people death since birth.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#152

Post by samatman »

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.

Between documentation, comments, issues, miscellaneous emails, and chat, I would be shocked if half the typing I do for a living is actual source code.

I can't imagine doing this job without fast and accurate typing, just like I can't imagine sharing this comment if it took me longer than 45 seconds to type it out.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#153

Post by Reedx »

dorfsmay wrote: post #149
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.

I disagree, reading speed at full comprehension level can slow you down and accelerate everything you do. I'm an extremely slow reader and that has been a major bottleneck in my life, it has slowed me down in everything I do and everything I've been interested in. Bill Gates is rumored to read several books per weeks and fully understand and remember most details. That in itself isn't enough to have made him who he i…

Yeah, certainly. That's why I said "not really" instead of an absolute statement, to leave room for cases like that (and I probably should've been more clear). But for the most part input speed isn't the bottleneck that people get stuck at indefinitely.

And it's also possible for this to change. With programming, for example, if you lose the use of a hand, you quickly find out typing speed is the new bottleneck.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#155

Post by fredoliveira »

pixelrevision wrote: post #142
emodendroket wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying a Kindle made me read way more.

I’ll second this. If you are struggling to stick with a novel then get some short stories to remind your brain why you used to like to read.

Highly recommend Ted Chiang's Exhalation for folks who are down for short (and very good) sci-fi.

(I'm not affiliated in any way - just really liked the book)

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#156

Post by NateEag »

WA wrote: post #93
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.

This was about two decades ago, and it was a piece of fiction I didn't care much about, so I can't tell you what my recall was like. I do still remember a character name and very rough snippets of the setting and plot, so it didn't all evaporate.

It did not have filler words, but it did have simpler vocabulary than most of what I read (it was fiction aimed at school children).

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#157

Post by NateEag »

zelly wrote: post #90
NateEag wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not subvocalize when reading. Trying to do it feels really weird to me.

You probably do even if you do not realize it. Can you spot incorrect use of "a" vs. "an" in text? You're subvocalizing. Are you unable to read while talking? You're subvocalizing. The idea of not-subvocalizing is to see text as images. You should be able to recognize chunks of words like you recognize different types of emojis or types of dogs. It is completely different from the way everyone learned to read. I can…

Your presumption that I'm wrong about my own experience is, well, presumptive.

Your tests for subvocalizing are not all correct (spotting "a" vs. "an" does not require subvocalizing).

I do experience text as visual stimulus without sound, and I do process it in clumps. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I once experienced reading multiple lines simultaneously, perceiving not just sentences but paragraphs all at once.

It was quite a rush.

It's not something I can control, or something I can do on command, but I think it is decent evidence that I don't subvocalize.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#159

Post by no-s »

The practice of speed reading is not the same as the ability to read quickly. I don't speed read, I read very quickly and often at the rate of page at a glance (I often tell people not to leave confidential papers exposed so I won't accidentally read something I shouldn't be privy to). When people ask me how they can learn to read more quickly, I ask them if they would consider reading more.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#160

Post by cthalupa »

Terr_ wrote: post #27
GolDDranks wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, as a non-native English speaker who mainly interface English through written language and rarely via spoken language, find this fascinating. I am able to read articles and blog posts in English rapidly and with full comprehension, but I'm totally NOT able to speak out loud most of the words. I find that it's mostly through visual medium the words "come" to me.

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.

Sure. I'm not fluent in 日本語, but I know a little and I learned the meaning of plenty of kanji before I knew the reading, and for many kanji, there can be multiple readings, as well. (onyomi and kunyomi)

In fact, a fairly popular way to self-teach Japanese involves utilizing a book series called "Remembering the Kanji", which teaches the meanings of kanji without any readings at all in the first volume. People are able to comprehend quite a bit on a basic level after volume 1 - no grammar and no way to speak or understand spoken word, but generally enough to get a rough idea of texts published at a fairly basic level.

However, I imagine most people at this point, for most words, are probably subvocalizing the english word or meaning in their heads. It's pretty common, even for people that know the proper pronunciation, to still keep translating in their mind vs. just using the word in the foreign language. Personally, I really only subvocalize the Japanese pronunciation for words where they aren't really directly translatable. Kawaii is a good example - it's easy to just translate as 'cute' and it's a word a lot of non-Japanese speakers know, but it doesn't really convey the full meaning of the term and all of the cultural aspects of it. Shikataganai/shogunai are another common example. Phrases and words that don't have accurate direct translations are generally the first people learn to think of totally in their secondary languages, and a lot of people never progress beyond that.

Which is a long way of saying it's hard to tell on this because someone who knows another language could be subvocalizing in their primary language, and someone who only knows the non-alphabetic language but can't pronounce it is pretty unlikely to exist, since most kids learn to speak and hear before they learn to write and read.

The exception would be people that are born totally deaf - and then you don't need to use a non-alphabetic language. They wouldn't know the sounds to be able to subvocalize them even in an alphabetic language.

Doing some quick googling, it looks like even some people that are born deaf develop a subvocalization alternative, with pictures, sign language, etc., though some do not develop the habit at all: https://books.google.com/books?id=8PhwXf9uj1IC&pg=PA114&lpg=...

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