![]() ![]() ![]() Spritz, it would seem, is just the latest repackaging of a decades-old optical snake oil. Interventions like Khazan’s and Henderson’s are meant to introduce doubt that Spritzing (or speed reading in general) offers an effective alternative to more traditional means of acquiring knowledge through written language. The “slightly left of fixation” ORP used by Spritz is a minor tweak at best. ![]() In the typical RSVP method, words are presented centered at fixation. The purported breakthrough use of the “ORP” doesn’t really help with this, and isn’t even novel. One of the biggest problems is that there just isn’t enough time to put the meaning together and store it in memory (what psychologists call “consolidation”). The research in the 1970s showed convincingly that although people can read using RSVP at normal reading rates, comprehension and memory for text falls as RSVP speeds increase, and the problem gets worse for paragraphs compared to single sentences. Read more at her blog, where this post first appeared.But can you really read a novel in 90 minutes with full comprehension? Well, like most things that seem too good to be true, the answer unfortunately is no. But reading with the aid of this “brain app” permits us to read swiftly and with depth and understanding - while reading with an app like Spritz allows us only to read simply, foolishly fast.Īnnie Murphy Paul is the author of the forthcoming book Brilliant: The Science of How We Get Smarter. Becoming an expert is a long, slow process, and each of us can develop true expertise in only a few areas. What’s worse, he probably won’t even realize it: lacking deep familiarity with the subject, he won’t know what he doesn’t know, and may confuse main ideas with supporting details or miss important points altogether.Įxpertise has its own limits, of course. The novice, on the other hand, tends to read at just a single speed: if he tries to accelerate that speed, by skimming or by using an app like Spritz, it’s likely his comprehension will slide. Lastly, the expert reader is able to vary the pace of her reading: skimming parts that she knows about already, or parts that she can tell are less important, then slowing down for passages that are new or that (she can judge from experience) are especially important. A novice reader, by contrast, faces surprises at every turn in the text her construction of a mental model is much more effortful and slow, since she’s building it from the ground up. A reader who is an expert in the subject he’s reading about will make more detailed and accurate predictions of what upcoming sentences and paragraphs will contain, allowing him to read quickly while filling in his already well-drawn mental model. As we read, we’re constantly building and updating a mental model of what’s going on in the text, elaborating what we’ve read already and anticipating what will come next. People reading within their domain of expertise have lots of related vocabulary and background knowledge, both of which allow them to steam along at full speed while novices stop, start, and re-read, struggling with unfamiliar words and concepts.ĭeep knowledge of what we’re reading about propels the reading process in other ways as well. The mental “chunking” that an expert - someone deeply familiar with the subject she’s reading about - can do gives her a decided speed and comprehension advantage over someone who is new to the material, for whom every fact and idea encountered in the text is a separate piece of information yet to be absorbed and connected. In the minds of experts, the authors explain, “a complex set of interrelated ideas” has “fused into a meaningful whole.” In their forthcoming book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, researchers Henry Roediger III and Mark McDaniel (along with writer Peter Brown) liken expertise to a “brain app” that makes reading and other kinds of intellectual activity proceed more efficiently and effectively. (I’m put in mind of the old Woody Allen joke: He speed-read War and Peace, he cracks, and came away with the insight that “it’s about Russia.”)īut all is not lost for those of us who would like to read faster, at least some of the time - because there does exist an “app” of sorts that has been proven to allow faster reading and complete comprehension. When we read really fast - especially in complex or difficult material - our understanding of the text suffers. But there’s another check on reading speed that Spritz can’t do anything about: our ability to comprehend what we’re reading. RSVP has been studied by scientists for years, and it does appear to bypass the speed limit imposed by eye movements during normal reading. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |