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We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

blog.readwise.io

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Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#31

Post by gnicholas »

hoodwink wrote: post #14
codingdave wrote: post #11

I'm not surprised that this slows down most people. But I'd be curious about a more targeted audience of people with known reading problems: people with dyslexia, for example. Or even regardless of speed, does it help overall with people who have comprehension problems with written communication?

i got that feedback a lot after initially posting the experiment: > Since posting this experiment, I've received a lot of side comments along the lines of, "Well, of course I don't expect Bionic Reading to work for most people, but for [my subpopulation], it really works." If that were the case, we might expect to see disproportionate benefits for those participants who read faster with Bionic Reading than for those…

It would be interesting to ask people after the test:

Have you been diagnosed with, or do you believe you have, dyslexia, ADHD, visual impairment, or other reading challenges?

It would also be interesting to ask people if they felt it was easier to read with the new tech or the old way. Speed is one metric, but subjective impressions of reading ease are also relevant.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#32

Post by affgrff2 »

What I would really like to instead of methods that help me speed up my reading is something that has a model of my knowledge and can summarize information to the points I don't know yet and are relevant to me.

Does someone know if that exists or if there is research on it?

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#33

Post by wahnfrieden »

janandonly wrote: post #4

So Bionic reading is just a form of speed reading? And it turns out that comprehension is suffering from trying to read faster... I think that most people, when they read, do a sort of automatic "speed reading" in their mind already. What I mean is: I notice that when I read, my eyes will skip parts of words where I don't need to see all the letters to know what word it is. What if all this trickery simply hinders ou…

Note there is rapid eye movement you’re not conscious of

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#34

Post by thenerdhead »

There's no shortcuts to anything in life. Thinking so is a fool's errand.

You get better at reading by reading and deliberately practicing it. Speed reading is a completely different skill than comprehension. Comprehension is a completely different skill than entertaining yourself. The fundamentals aren't going anywhere. They'll be here when you realize speedreading, bionic reading, and summaries are just distractions.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#35

Post by bpodgursky »

thenerdhead wrote: post #34

There's no shortcuts to anything in life. Thinking so is a fool's errand. You get better at reading by reading and deliberately practicing it. Speed reading is a completely different skill than comprehension. Comprehension is a completely different skill than entertaining yourself. The fundamentals aren't going anywhere. They'll be here when you realize speedreading, bionic reading, and summaries are just distraction…

This is trivially disprovable; it's easy to think of longcuts, ways to accomplish or learn something inefficiently.

There would be no difference between a great teacher and a terrible teacher otherwise. Or a great coach and a terrible coach.

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#36

Post by lucideer »

> tl;dr. Actually no, the results will probably not surprise you. After analyzing data from 2,074 testers, we found no evidence that Bionic Reading has any positive effect on reading speed.

I've seen a lot of viral social media posts about bionic reading recently and this is the very first time I've ever seen anyone mention reading speed. Everything I've seen is selling bionic reading for greater reading comprehension and focus. Never mentions speed.

Granted the article measures reading comprehension too (though I'd have some doubts about the methodology of 3 MCQs on a PG article - this part of the test didn't seem high on the author's priority list).

Did the authors just waste a lot of their time because they didn't pay attention to the claims or are we just in very different bubbles?

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#38

Post by hoodwink »

lucideer wrote: post #36

> tl;dr. Actually no, the results will probably not surprise you. After analyzing data from 2,074 testers, we found no evidence that Bionic Reading has any positive effect on reading speed. I've seen a lot of viral social media posts about bionic reading recently and this is the very first time I've ever seen anyone mention reading speed. Everything I've seen is selling bionic reading for greater reading comprehensio…

giant hero section on bionic-reading.com:

"Did you know that your brain reads faster than your eye?"

title of bionic-reading.com:

"Faster. Better. More focused. Reading."

does "faster" not refer to speed to you or something?

Re: We found no evidence that Bionic Reading has a positive effect on reading speed

#40

Post by runevault »

bpodgursky wrote: post #35
thenerdhead wrote: post #34

There's no shortcuts to anything in life. Thinking so is a fool's errand. You get better at reading by reading and deliberately practicing it. Speed reading is a completely different skill than comprehension. Comprehension is a completely different skill than entertaining yourself. The fundamentals aren't going anywhere. They'll be here when you realize speedreading, bionic reading, and summaries are just distraction…

This is trivially disprovable; it's easy to think of longcuts, ways to accomplish or learn something inefficiently. There would be no difference between a great teacher and a terrible teacher otherwise. Or a great coach and a terrible coach.

The entire software industry is based on creating new efficiencies... On top of all the stuff you said I just... don't see how anyone could believe that.
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