RE: Increasing Reading speed, Please reply

From: Greg Jordan (jordan@chuma.cas.usf.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 18 2003 - 10:56:01 MST

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    I wonder if subvocalization is really a problem for speed. I know a blind
    guy who listens to the Web & email via a machine reader - and he has the
    speed turned up so fast I couldn't even make out it was speech. It's
    marvelous - he can process speech at a much faster rate than anyone can
    speak in natural language. It seems then one could subvocalize also at a
    high rate of speed...

    gej
    resourcesoftheworld.org
    jordan@chum.cas.usf.edu

    On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Dickey, Michael F wrote:

    > Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 10:58:25 -0500
    > From: "Dickey, Michael F" <michael_f_dickey@groton.pfizer.com>
    > Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
    > To: "'extropians@extropy.org'" <extropians@extropy.org>
    > Subject: RE: Increasing Reading speed, Please reply
    >
    > -----Original Message-----
    > From: gts [mailto:gts_2000@yahoo.com]
    >
    > Nate wrote:
    >
    > > What are the best ways to increase reading speed. Does increasing
    > > speed have drawbacks. Do the computer programs give you results, if
    > > so how much are they exaggerating the results they advertize.
    > > Let me know thanks, Nate
    >
    > "The trick to speed reading is learning how not to "sound out" the words in
    > one's mind as one reads. But as above it pleases me to sound out the words
    > in my mind as I read, and so I lost interest in speed reading. "
    >
    > Nate, I second gts's comments, I read often and have read a lot about speed
    > reading but was quite skeptical of it. The other day I gave it a shot while
    > reading something I didn't particular enjoy but needed to read. You have to
    > concentrate on not subvocalizing as you read (I understand some people do
    > not, and I wonder if deaf from birth people read faster) because reading in
    > that manner limits your speed to the subvocalization speed. As I understand
    > it, the process is something like
    >
    > 1) brain recognizes word through pattern recognition
    > 2) word is subvocalized
    > 3) word entered into memory (kind of)
    >
    > When looking at it like that, its hard to understand what the
    > subvocalization is for, since part of recognizing a word necessarily entails
    > recognizing that word! So anyway, I tried it the other day and made a
    > concentrated effort to not subvocalize but I lead my eyes in the reading
    > with a finger (another tactic often suggested) After each sentence I would
    > stop and attempt to repeat the sentence, to my astonishment I found I often
    > could repeat it word for word, with more accuracy than if I had
    > subvocalized. The retentioned seemed to be better than the conventional
    > type of reading, but it is very difficult to get used to reading without
    > subvocalization, its like soaking up information without your upper level of
    > conciousness being aware of it. I think that might be the role
    > subvocalization plays, your super fast pattern recognition and information
    > processing capable brain telling your relatively dimwitted serial process
    > simulated 'conciousness' that you are in fact reading.
    >
    > I need to practice more, but I keep tending back to subvocalized reading as
    > gts mentions, because it seems more enjoyable?
    >
    > Michael Dickey.
    >
    >
    >
    >
    >
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