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Slashdot Asks: What's Your View On Speed Reading?
Wouldn't it be great if you could read a novel in an hour or two? Certainly, many people do that. The phenomenon of speed reading is nothing new with plenty of people claiming that they have grown habituated -- or taught themselves into -- reading things in an accelerated fashion. Not everyone -- including yours truly -- is a fan of this. There are several studies that suggest that 'speed reading' result in people missing out on lots of tidbits. A New York Times article, published Friday, also suggests the same. Jeffrey M. Zacks, and Rebecca Treiman, in an op-ed, citing a recent article in Psychological Science in the Public Interest, claim that "it's extremely unlikely you can greatly improve your reading speed without missing out on a lot of meaning." They write: Certainly, readers are capable of rapidly scanning a text to find a specific word or piece of information, or to pick up a general idea of what the text is about. But this is skimming, not reading. We can definitely skim, and it may be that speed-reading systems help people skim better.Which brings us to the question: What's your view on speed reading?
i like speed-reading. i used to read 2-3 sci-fi / fantasy a week, except the 800-1000 page monsters like the robert jordan series, which often took me 4-6 days of continuous reading, and except asimov's detective stories about elijah bailey, which were incredibly dense logical reasoning (necessary for a detective and his partner). the thing i like about speed-reading is that when you come back to the same book in 4 to 12 months time, it's enjoyable - again - because you find things that you missed the first time. so the point that this article is making i see is an *advantage*... not a disadvantage.
But speed reading reduces enjoyment and comprehension, so removes the pleasure from pleasure reading, and the comprehension from technical reading. So there ends up being no advantages.
Learn to love Alaska
I spent several years trying to get help for dyslexia. A lot of school counsellors assumed it was what I was dealing with.
Right up to the point one caught that what I was actually doing was self taught speed reading everything and couldn't switch the damn thing off.
You have no idea how annoying it is to know a piece of information MUST exist within a passage but no amount of rereading, trying to slow yourself down, will get you to stop skipping over it because your brain has already decided it knows what is said.
As a simple example: Bob has $10. He pays dollars in tax. What percentage does Bob pay?
It's a standard question pattern. You know damn well that there must be an amount of dollars Bob paid in tax. You know the question likely has something like TWO in there and the answer would be twenty percent. But you read it over and over and the TWO never reveals itself because your brain has already decided it knows what the passage says.
It made chunks of my degree miserable. I knew the concepts, could study faster than most others, yet kept missing key parts of often simple questions in the exams.
Once I learned what I was doing, a hell of a lot of practice has weeded most of it back out at the expense of reading slower.
So, yeah, speed reading is great. Until it isn't. And then really isn't when you can't stop it.
I agree that speed reading novels is a bummer.
The Elementary school I went to had a reading class for the kids that could already read well by third grade; I'm sure it was someone's research project. :)
The used a tachistoscope to allow reading one line at a time, and gave tests over the content.
I worked up to 470 something wpm, with 98% comprehension; others in my class did better.
Several kids could max out the machine. :)
I've read Steven King's "IT" in a weekend, with sleep. Well, some, anyway.
Books are over way too quick for me.
Technical stuff is different; reading doesn't make the math any easier, lol.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
That sounds like the reading equivalent of 'jumping to conclusions' in spoken conversation where the subject believes they already know how a sentence is going to be completed and jumps in with an answer before the speaker has finished.
How did you combat it? Does word-counting help? Does it affect both printed and electronically displayed text? Do you get any other symptoms like headaches?
It reminds me of some of the symptoms of Visual Stress a.k.a. Meares-Irlin syndrome [0].
I helped a friend many years ago (2002) who was thought to be dumb because he seemed unable to absorb written material and after 1/2 a page would switch to light skim-reading ("speed reading") and/or distract himself in any way possible. Being questioned on the material later he would be unable to answer many questions due to skimming over the material, leading to the 'dumb' tag.
He would also sometimes complain of severe headaches that could last days. Since childhood parents, teachers and doctors had tried to find a cause and subjected him to all sorts of tests with no result.
One day whilst we were focused on some programming he complained of a headache. Being the first time I'd witnessed his symptoms I asked him to describe exactly what he was experiencing. It turned out the printing would begin to swim around and blur in and out of focus and get worse the longer he tried to focus on it. He'd never been asked this question before and had assumed everyone experienced this and had not mentioned it.
After some research I discovered Professor Arnold Wilkins at Essex University, U.K., had developed a diagnostic test that identified the cause and possible counter-measures. Meares-Irlen syndrome is a visual acuity abnormality that can be partially or fully re-mediated with the use of colour filters, with each sufferer needing filters tailored to them - rather like a lens prescription for glasses.
We visited the university and my friend undertook the test and immediately noticed an improvement once the correct colour filter was identified. These tests were done whilst placing permutations of coloured transparencies over printed material (black text on white paper).
As a result I wrote a program that detected and applied the correct colour overlay to the computer screen and it worked as well as the transparencies but the colour required was quite different - due to the differences between reflective and transmissive light.
[0] "Colour in the treatment of visual stress" http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/
[1] "READING THROUGH COLOUR" http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/overlays/book2.pdf
I'm 60, and was sick a great deal from about 3-8. I was taught a speed reading method to keep up with my class. I also have extraordinary memory skills...not quite Marilu Henner...but close.
So, I tend to have great retention which has been a blessing and a curse. I mean, school was stupidly easy so I never learned how to study or do research; I could just read the material and take the test.
Speed reading is good for some folks, I'd say. But, it may cause you to be a little lazy and undisciplined.
I am my own gestalt.
I... I understand. I don't think many realize how introspective, almost profound, your statement was. I test like a genius. I really am not that smart. I don't even have long-term memory, it's like it holds it long enough to be dumped. When it no longer needs it, it cycles out the unimportant (it thinks) stuff and leaves me with vague recollections. On paper, I'm a genius. My thesis was the hardest thing I've done in my life - I'm also not even very creative.
In classes where I could get away with it, I used to read the books in the first week of the semester/year and just leave it and not bother with it for the rest of the year. That was rather effective until I hit college. I have my Ph.D. but it was a pain in the ass. On paper, I look like I'm brilliant. That's not even remotely the case. I just seem to retain things really well - until it gets dumped. Once it's dumped, it quickly fades unless there's a reason for me to keep using it.
It's why I'll reference stuff like, "It was in that documentary, by what's his face - the guy who has the photo technique named after him... Burns, yeah, him... Anyhow, it was in that documentary but I'll be damned if I can remember what it was about but I know they mentioned it and had several references for it. Oh, it was also about the rum-running, so it must have been his prohibition documentary or, wait, wait... It might have actually been about the period before and during prohibition - but it was about it, nonetheless. And that's what it reminds me of."
It's like my brain functions a bit like RAM. I liken it to a hard drive that needs to be defragged or given a full low-level reformat but it's more like RAM in that once it is used and no longer needed then it is freed up for another application with no remnants left behind unless you have special forensic tools. :/ Once the test is over, the paper's handed in, the questions asked, and the data no longer needed - it's fading, fading with an alarming speed. I'm a couple of years younger than you, I swear it feels like I can feel my brain plasticize. So, I keep doing things to ensure my memory is getting a work out. I keep learning new things. I've returned to doing some programming - I've been retired for eight years now. I've even started to put a few things online and I'm working on a few other projects - all to keep the memory from going.
I fear that more than I fear death. I don't think that's vanity speaking, I seriously need what memory I have. I've just never really retained it, not very well, unless it was something that got lots of recollection, work, or emphasis. Even then, it's tough to be motivated when you can just reread it and retain it well enough for the next exam. How very true, it can (and might) foster laziness - and apathy.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."