Studies challenge legitimacy of speed reading

[fuelair]

I share Dustin's skepticism that you can read 10,000 wpm of fresh material with 80% comprehension on a topic which you're not already an expert, even if it's non-technical material.

Unlike Dustin, I don't think it's possible that no one in the world can -it would be more plausible to me if you came across as one of the most intellectually nimble posters on this message board. No offense, but you don't -though you do seem like a smart person.

Doesn't mean you don't have your claimed ability -but a little more evidence would be great.

Maybe we could do an on-line test: have you skim a 10,000 word document on the web, then give you a quick comprehension test that would be difficult to answer without having read the document for 80% comprehension.

Are you game, fuelair?

Uh, Dave have you read all the posts here (especially post 23 above yours - which I have copied here)? I ask because, to the best of my knowledge, I have not claimed anywhere to be able to read 10,000 wpm. That would be because I cannot and never have been able to. The fastest (timed anyway) that I have ever read was the 5500wpm I read when I did my last ASA test. The ten thousands were the 15 year old student (78-82% comp) and the Evelyn Woods person on tv. If you are not clear on that, go to search, type in speedreading (or speed reading) and mark the posts box - that will take you to the previous thread on this where you can see if you can find where Dustin got that speed - 'cause it sure isn't in this one - what you will find is that he has twice mis-read, mis-interpreted or just made up a claim about my speed. In each case I called him on it. In each case (as far as I could locate on a fast re-read) he did not respond in any functional way to the correction.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Which more or less disproves Dustin's point.

What do you think speed-reading is? It's specifically about not bothering to read every word, because much of the writing can be grasped from contextual anchors.

The cited research suggests that people can, physically, look at about 300 wpm. Accepting this at face value, that doesn't mean that people must therefore take at least two minutes to read a 600-word article. They can read 300 words -- but which 300?

As Legge points out, people jump around in texts. They don't read consecutive words. Simply by not reading prepositions (almost all of which can be inferred from context) -- by not jumping to where your peripheral vision tells you there is a preposition (which are easily recognizable by their length, even with peripheral vision) -- you can probably add 10-20% to your reading speed.

I'm afraid that Dustin's interpretation of the research simply doesn't hold up.

Reading is not equal to Skimming

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

How did you know about the martinis - that's a trade secret!!!



We have a small misunderstanding here, based on your comment slightly later. Where did you get the idea that I thought this (reading speed )made me special?

Because you stick to it despite evidence to the contrary.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Dustin, where did I say I read at 8000wpm? I believe I said my top was 5500 -the kid I helped train was about twice my speed - but that is not 8000 either. I said 850 when first tested in elementary, around 1450 on testing when joining ASA staff and 5500 after training. In addition, I may have said something that milead you to believe I normally read at the higher rate(not sure what or where, but...), I normally read at 1000 to 1500 wpm - unless I am data mining. Reading above that takes the enjoyment of the words and their flow away (notice how people who talk very fast tend to sound monotonous - it's the same with words in print. You see them, you remember them, but you do not have time to construct a view in your mind.). I was giving the speedreading details because you seem upset that this skill exists. It is not magic, I am not superhuman - nor are people who have perfect pitch, or can remember perfectly every word on every page they see (I wish I had that one!) (eidetic memory, slipped by me at first).

Added as edit: I said 5500 because that is what my last timed reading at ASA was. Not 6000, not 5217 (They used blocks of 50 above 1000 for ease of math I assume). I believe in accuracy - in the use and selection of words, the use of numbers, and in my statements. I will now tell you something I always tell my students at the beginning of each year:" I will not bother lying to you." The astute among them -1 or 2 a year -will catch that this has a possible meaning/interpretation of "it is not a bother to lie to you" and I tell them truthfully-that one iis not what I mean. In all my years teaching, only one student caught it (the real meaning): to lie to someone, you must care enough (unless you are a pathological liar) about them/their attitude/ feelings about you to want to look better in their eyes. I do not.

If you're going to re-post your response from the other thread then how about reading my response to that in the other thread?

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Uh, Dave have you read all the posts here (especially post 23 above yours - which I have copied here)? I ask because, to the best of my knowledge, I have not claimed anywhere to be able to read 10,000 wpm. That would be because I cannot and never have been able to. The fastest (timed anyway) that I have ever read was the 5500wpm I read when I did my last ASA test. The ten thousands were the 15 year old student (78-82% comp) and the Evelyn Woods person on tv. If you are not clear on that, go to search, type in speedreading (or speed reading) and mark the posts box - that will take you to the previous thread on this where you can see if you can find where Dustin got that speed - 'cause it sure isn't in this one - what you will find is that he has twice mis-read, mis-interpreted or just made up a claim about my speed. In each case I called him on it. In each case (as far as I could locate on a fast re-read) he did not respond in any functional way to the correction.

If you want to backtrack then fine....

Here's your previous post copied and pasted until it gets to the size of what about 5550 words looks like. (5538 to be exact).

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and

Still reeks of BS.

 

[Wudang]

Reading is not equal to Skimming

And DK didn't say it was. Unlike you relying on 1 web writeup of one numpty writing up what was written elsewhere, the good Dr has actually had a little look at other research about how people actually read and not one single naive article whose conclusion is based on the assumption that the eye works like a camera. It doesn't. As I said, google on "human information processing" "psycholinguistics" and "reading" and get a couple of facts inside your head.
Just as a starter, you'll find that we generate probablity-based theories about what the next word in a sentence is likely to be and sometimes the probability assigned is so high that we fail to parse perfectly valid english sentences like "The old man the boats".

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

And DK didn't say it was. Unlike you relying on 1 web writeup of one numpty writing up what was written elsewhere, the good Dr has actually had a little look at other research about how people actually read and not one single naive article whose conclusion is based on the assumption that the eye works like a camera. It doesn't. As I said, google on "human information processing" "psycholinguistics" and "reading" and get a couple of facts inside your head.
Just as a starter, you'll find that we generate probablity-based theories about what the next word in a sentence is likely to be and sometimes the probability assigned is so high that we fail to parse perfectly valid english sentences like "The old man the boats".

Re-read DK's post. He/She was talking about "skimming" not reading.

 

[fuelair]

For the benefit of anyone still following this:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=65753&page=6&highlight=speedreading is where the previous posts are. Note that Dustin posted NOTHING following my post 139 (the one I quoted from.) To be absolutely accurate, he went back (meaning unless I reread previous posts I wouldn't see it) and edited the number of repeats of post he had copied to get 8000 words (which had never been stated/claimed per above - feel free to check both threads) to 6000. That is the only thing I did not previously respond to. He has now done a similar post on this thread which is fine - I already know and assume most others do pretty much what 5000+ words looks like.

 

[Wudang]

Re-read DK's post. He/She was talking about "skimming" not reading.

No she wasn't. You just think so because you don't know very much and haven't bothered to find out any more. That is how we adults read once we get past having a finger under the word and saying each word out loud.

eta: Do you know what the word "heuristic" means?

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

No she wasn't. You just think so because you don't know very much and haven't bothered to find out any more. That is how we adults read once we get past having a finger under the word and saying each word out loud.

C'mon..

What do you think speed-reading is? It's specifically about not bothering to read every word, because much of the writing can be grasped from contextual anchors.

.....

As Legge points out, people jump around in texts. They don't read consecutive words. Simply by not reading prepositions (almost all of which can be inferred from context) -- by not jumping to where your peripheral vision tells you there is a preposition (which are easily recognizable by their length, even with peripheral vision) -- you can probably add 10-20% to your reading speed.

She's describing "skimming" here.

eta: Do you know what the word "heuristic" means?

Yes.

 

[Wudang]

C'mon..

Nope, it's true. We can read without using a finger or reading aloud/

She's describing "skimming" here.

No. Read again what she wrote about what Legge said. Even better, and this will be a stretch, go and find out yourself what Legge was talking about. Get some facts and knowledge. It might become habit-forming.
Legge is describing normal reading. As I pointed out (and you ignored) it's that kind of heuristics-based reading model that explains why we have trouble parsing "The old man the boats." The "searchlight" model favoured by visual researchers with blinkers on is horribly outdated and fails to explain many well-documented findings.

 

[RenaissanceBiker]

I have heard it said (no, I cannot recall the source) that speed reading is 100% useless for technical material (especially that which is new to the reader) -- in other words, material requiring deeper comprehension than what's needed to simply store facts.

I can finish a Penthouse magazine in about 2 shakes.

/rimshot

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Nope, it's true. We can read without using a finger or reading aloud/


No. Read again what she wrote about what Legge said. Even better, and this will be a stretch, go and find out yourself what Legge was talking about. Get some facts and knowledge. It might become habit-forming.
Legge is describing normal reading. As I pointed out (and you ignored) it's that kind of heuristics-based reading model that explains why we have trouble parsing "The old man the boats." The "searchlight" model favoured by visual researchers with blinkers on is horribly outdated and fails to explain many well-documented findings.

What findings?

 

[drkitten]

No. Read again what she wrote about what Legge said. Even better, and this will be a stretch, go and find out yourself what Legge was talking about. Get some facts and knowledge. It might become habit-forming.
Legge is describing normal reading. As I pointed out (and you ignored) it's that kind of heuristics-based reading model that explains why we have trouble parsing "The old man the boats." The "searchlight" model favoured by visual researchers with blinkers on is horribly outdated and fails to explain many well-documented findings.

Just to emphasize this -- I believe that Dan Slobin (U.C. Berkeley) was writing on this heuristic-based model in the late 70s and early 80s. The idea that context can be used to improve reading speed is hardly novel.

And, no. jumping around in text is not "skimming." It's the normal reading pattern. Almost no competent reader looks at every word on the page. One of the key observed differences observed between natural speed readers and "normal" readers, for example, is the frequency of reverse jumps; a normal reader will flick backwards in the text, for example, from a verb to the corresponding subject or from a pronoun to its antecedent. Speed readers don't do that --- evidently they trust their memory enough that they don't need to reconfirm what they've already read. Here's a rather interesting example where they found this effect within a single patient. But also notice specifically that they stress the "top-down" aspects of processing -- from the introduction, "Some authors have argued that the pattern of each reading scanpath is mainly dictated by the visual characteristics of the text, such as the length of the next word and the distance from one optimal viewing point to the next; while others have stressed linguistic factors such as sentential meaning. It is likely that both "bottom-up" (visual) and "top-down" (linguistic and attentional) factors modify reading scanpaths."

The "linguistic and attentional" factors are exactly what Legge is discounting and you are evidently unfamiliar with.

 

[Wudang]

Try starting here

http://www.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/prob.pdf

 

[drkitten]

What findings?

Wudang already gave you one example. So-called "garden path sentences," such as "The old man the boats," or "The horse raced past the barn fell," which are notably slower to read than non-GP sentences of comparable length and vocabulary.

Why?

Another example, of course, is the inability of readers to identify ungrammatical sentences when the the ungrammaticality involves function words such as "of" or "an." Heuristic theories predict that because the function words are inferrable from context, the skilled reader skips over them and doesn't notice the error. The "searchlight" model makes no such prediction....

A third example is simply the effect of layout on reading speeds. Why should paragraphing a document, for example, make it easier to read? Again, the heuristic model is fairly clear -- layout and paragraphing provides information for better text prediction. What does the "searchlight" model predict?

 

[drkitten]

Try starting here

http://www.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/prob.pdf

Oh, like Dustin's going to believe Dan Jurafsky. What does he know about the field? -- aside from holding a Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics, a professorship at one of the top schools in the world in that field, and a MacArthur Fellowship for his work in that area....

 

[TjW]

Well, you've got to feel sorry for Dustin. If he can only read less than 300 wpm, his life probably is very difficult.

 

[jimbob]

I just read the Titanic article aloud at 353 word per minute the first time through. If I didn't need to breathe I could do a bit better.

And the fastest talker can speak at 600+ wpm?

Reading must be faster than speaking.

As drkitten said, the paper quoted in the OP seemed naive.

Reading is not like searching for Waldo in a "where's Waldo/Wally" book.

Fuelair, correct me if I misunderstood your posts, but I understood that you were just giving some evidence against the statements proposed in the OP. You used yourself as an example, as you have the most reliable evidence about your own abilities.

Jim

 

[fuelair]

And the fastest talker can speak at 600+ wpm?

Reading must be faster than speaking.

As drkitten said, the paper quoted in the OP seemed naive.

Reading is not like searching for Waldo in a "where's Waldo/Wally" book.

Fuelair, correct me if I misunderstood your posts, but I understood that you were just giving some evidence against the statements proposed in the OP. You used yourself as an example, as you have the most reliable evidence about your own abilities.

Jim

More precisely, I was mostly responding to Wolfs post telling him what type of speed reading course he had taken and relating it to my course (as student and then teacher). It is/was not an ad (I doubt the company is still in existance and I worked for them only a year or less. Yes, other than the 15 year old where I got to bring in a book and make the test, it is me.