While Skeptoid podcasts are almost always interesting, the episode on speed reading was particularly informative. Prior to listening to this I wasn’t even aware of the uncertainty surrounding speed reading as a practice.
Kim Peek, otherwise known as “Rain Man”, was able to read 10,000 words per minute (wpm) – reading and comprehending two pages at a time, one with each eye. It’s explained that Kim Peek’s hardware arrangement is not quite standard as he was born without a corpus callosum (part of the brain connecting the left and right hemisphere). This difference in his brain may actually increase parallelisation.
For people with standard hardware, reading rates are comparitively modest. Researcher Ronald Carver has done significant research into speed reading and conducted a study comparing the competing foces in speed reading: reading rate and comprehention. Subjects in the study included chamption speed readers and other fast readers. Carver’s results concluded that none of the subjects could read faster than 600wpm with more than 75% retention.
A common teqnique used when teaching speed reading is the elimination of sub-vocalisation (reading aloud in your head), as this is considered a primary bottleneck in reading performance. While this makes sense, it’s known that reading without subvocalisation is impossible to avoid – fastest speed readers do it, even skimmers subvocalise keywords. Subvocalisation manifests as slight movements in the tongue and throat muscles. In fact, NASA has a device that can interpret human silent reading, because it always involves subvocalisation.
There are more interesting tidbits in the podcast itself, I highly recommend it. Listen below:
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http://skeptoid.com/audio/skeptoid-4229.mp3
For the source, references and further reading visit the article on Skeptoid.
Just listening to my podcasts and caught a particularly interesting and useful episode (#68) of