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An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

blog.readwise.io

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Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#71

Post by gnicholas »

thevagrant wrote: post #68

Faster with Bionic by 6%. Less of a difference than I expected although it does feel easier for some reason. I have thought about using Bionic or Dyslexic fonts but I'm worried that it'd cause a change over time that makes it even harder to read plain format text. My reading speed overall is slow compared to others. I notice my reading speed is only fast and accurate when I'm extremely interested in a topic.

I wouldn't be too concerned that using specialized fonts would become a dependency. I run BeeLine Reader, a similar tool that uses color gradients instead of bolding, and we've not heard this from our users much (though we did wonder about it when we were starting out). People do like specialized fonts and wish they had them on platforms where they're unavailable, but it's not like it becomes a crutch that you can't live without.

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#72

Post by joyeuse6701 »

tveita wrote: post #57
saurik wrote: post #10

I find it really difficult and annoying -- and thereby slow -- to read with these "fixation" points as that's just not how I feel eyes work... I want my eyes to scan across the text rather than ratcheting from one word to the next word, which is both slow and exhausting. The words and "fixation" is thereby just a massive distraction. Hell: if I really really need to read quickly I try to do this thing where I scan my…

I got this feeling as well and I did 50% better with the plain Literata. I wonder the bolding might speed up slower readers and slow down faster readers by encouraging a word-by-word pace. It would be interesting to see a scatter plot of Bionic vs Literata speed.

Yes, I think some of the popularity with Bionic reading is for ADHD users who I believe are slow readers in part because they have to go back and reread because they lose focus. I am one of them, and according to this, I am 15% faster with Bionic reading.

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#74

Post by viraptor »

Bjorkbat wrote: post #70
karaterobot wrote: post #26

In my experience, more people need to work on reading comprehension than reading speed. Comprehension is what actually matters, and is what seems to be in short supply. If Bionic Reading promised increased reading speed with no loss of comprehension, and provided it, all it would mean is that people would misunderstand things at a faster rate.

I’ve been thinking of that a lot as well. What’s the point of being able to read fast if you miss the fine details? What’s the point if you read so fast that you just sort of forget everything? One of the many issues I have with contemporary literate culture, another being those who insist on reading a large volume of books, on being “well read”, rather than focusing on quality.

In defence of skimming books: Not everyone is enjoying reading the same way. Not even one person in different contexts. There are books where I'm going to be engaged completely. There are others I'll enjoy for main plot but will want to skip the fluff. I'm extreme cases I'll gloss over a whole paragraph as "whatever, I don't care about the scenery". Being able to skim quickly to the next interesting part is a good skill.

But the comment made me think - can we even improve the comprehension, as in processing what we read? (not as in understanding the vocabulary/structure) I've never heard of ways to purposefully do that.

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#75

Post by quasarj »

ryzvonusef wrote: post #33

https://speed.readwise.io Your results Typeface Bionic Reading Literata Article 1 591 WPM 352 WPM Article 2 657 WPM 457 WPM Average Speed 624 WPM 405 WPM You read 43% faster with Bionic Reading Guess gotta give this a try for storybooks... maybe some enterprising and bored HN nerd can make a Calibre plugin that converts regular epubs to bionic reading enabled epub files ---- but the truth is, for the aforementioned s…

Jeeze that is fast. More than twice the average reading speed. I wonder if bionic reading helps more for "speed readers"? Your results surely suggest it.

Also - It must be so painful for you to type, or heck even speak!

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#76

Post by quasarj »

westcort wrote: post #12

Here are some bookmarklets I developed to cut out the extra formatting, bolding, and other content on websites that makes them difficult to read. I would appreciate any feedback or modifications for improvement. Literata font with a peach background color to optimize reading speed and no selective bolding: javascript:void function(){javascript:(function(){var a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll("p, title, a, ul"…

Did you never find the Reader Mode button?

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#77

Post by quasarj »

lom wrote: post #61

Bionic reading: 317 WPM Literata: 317 WPM You read 0% faster with Bionic Reading I guess I’m a pretty consistent slow reader.

Way faster than me, and at the top end of average, based on everything I can find online. I'm curious though, what the average is among "readers" lol.

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#79

Post by fourthark »

kminehart wrote: post #6

Linked at the end of the article is the short (15 minutes maybe) self-test: https://speed.readwise.io/ . Curious what results people here got. I got 23% faster with BR but I couldn't tell if I was just trying harder.

18% faster with Literata

Re: An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

#80

Post by nestorD »

If the authors of the article are reading this: I would also do a test to see if the variance of the two groups (bionic vs normal) is significantly different. I did not check it but bionic might be very beneficial to some and detrimental to others which would not be seen when looking at the mean (you should also plot the distributions, it pretty much always a good first reflex).
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