Two years ago, when I was a sophomore in college, my roommates led me to play know-it-all, which was a big turning point in my college career, and why?
Because I discovered that there are so many awesome people who have read hundreds of books on astronomy, psychology, literature, economics, politics, art, etc., which at once made me, who had only read a few popular novels, feel.
I’m really too young ……
From reading only fiction in the beginning, I have now been reading a lot of expository books, and I have even mastered what seems amazing to outsiders – fast reading.
For example, books like “Tipping Point”, “Transient”, “Slow Thinking”, each about 200,000 words, 2-3 hours to finish reading, due to show off psychology I even sent a circle of friends, saying how long it takes to finish reading ah blablabla.
I immediately had a friend ask, “Wow, I read it so fast, I’m seeking advice on how to read it quickly!” And I replied to him, “Sure, I’ll write an article about it later!”
At that time, the “fast reading theory” in my head came from Baidu’s various speed reading techniques and a book called “Super Speed Reading”, and I thought that the reason why I read so fast was because I benefited from these awesome speed reading theories.
I was wrong, completely wrong.
Thank goodness I read books on cognitive science, thank goodness I checked the N academic literature, and thank goodness I didn’t teach these pithy things to anyone else.
Here’s how to decipher why all those seemingly awesome “quick reading methods” are all wrong!
1. Two false theories
Two of the most widely circulated speed reading theories are these.
Speed Reading Theory #1: Speeding up your eyeballs on paper and increasing the width between eye pauses will allow you to read fast.
Cause of error: reversing the cause and effect.
The vertical bars indicate where the reader’s eye is paused, as shown in the figure, with the reader white on the left and the experienced reader on the right.
It is true that experienced readers, or people who can read quickly, have faster eye beats and larger widths between eye pauses. Does this seem to indicate that the theory is correct?
And, those who promote this theory will usually tell you.
“You see, experiments have shown that those who are already able to read quickly have faster eyeball beats, so you just have to have faster eyeball beats to be able to read quickly ……”
What’s wrong is that this theory completely reverses the causes and consequences.
The eye bounce is only the result and expression of fast reading, not the cause of it!
“The correlation between eye movements and reading ability reflects a causal relationship that is the exact opposite of what was previously thought. Irregular eye movements do not lead to dyslexia (Rayner, 1998); rather, it is slow word recognition and comprehension difficulties that lead to irregular eye movements.”
–This is Psychology
The funny thing is, they’ve even developed a training method based on eye-tracking theory, such as the claim that if you hold a pen to the bottom of a text and quickly underline it, you’ll be able to read more blocks of text with your eyes on the pen cap, which is pure nonsense.
I was confused by this set of claims in the first place, and I hope you’ll come to your senses now and repeat them again.
Rapid eye movements are only an outward sign of fast reading, not a cause of fast reading, and deliberately increasing eye movements does not increase reading comprehension speed.
Speed Reading Theory #2: You can read faster by eliminating silent reading and eliminating the sound of words in your head as you read.
Why it’s wrong: Silent reading is an essential part of reading and cannot be eliminated.
Some claim that silent reading is the bottleneck in reading speed.
“Oxymorons can remember large amounts of text directly in visual form, as fast as they can. The average person, on the other hand, transmits textual information to the speech center, where it forms an inner monologue, and then to the memory center, which is slow as hell.”
So all you have to do is eliminate silent reading and you’ll be able to read at a higher speed?
But the opposite is true: fast readers simply read faster, not eliminate silent reading, and it is impossible to eliminate silent reading.
Scientific research has objectively measured the weak signal that silent reading sends to the vocal cords, and the presence of that signal is detected during all reading.
2. False theories that seem to work?
I suspect that after reading the above, there will be some people who think I’m full of shit and who think.
Why is it that you have used the above Speed Reading Method and have actually improved your reading speed?
There are three reasons for this.
First, your reading speed may indeed increase, but this increase has nothing to do with the “quick read method” but rather with.
1) You are more focused
From a cognitive science perspective, focusing attention allows one’s limited cognitive abilities to be fully utilized in reading (more accurately: one’s limited working memory is fully utilized in reading), which results in faster reading.
Earlier I read an article on what is known as the “rapid reading theory” that talks about training methods that have the following to say.
“Be sure to keep reading at a rate of 0.5 seconds per line!
Be sure to hold it for more than 3 minutes!
Always keep your eyes on the top edge of the nib!
Stay focused!
Don’t get distracted!”
Now do you see why these theories have helped you improve your reading speed a little? The answer is: It’s not skill that makes you read fast, it’s focus that makes you read fast.
The Placebo Effect
You feel like you’re reading faster, and possibly because you’ve fallen victim to this illusion – the placebo effect. The word placebo comes from the medical field and, in short, the placebo effect means.
“Even if the patient is taking a fake medicine made of flour, as long as he doesn’t know it’s fake and believes it works, it will help him get better.”
Throughout history, pig’s teeth, crocodile poop, and a thousand other bizarre plant and animal remedies have been used as placebos to make people “feel” better.
These quick-reading theories are also placebos, useless by themselves, but they convince you that they work.
It makes you believe that you have finally found a quick cure, and thus you “feel” like you are reading faster.
In fact, as long as you believe in it, you can still feel that your reading speed has improved by switching to a useless method B, C, or D. (3) Reading speed is not the same as comprehension speed.
(3) Reading Speed ≠ Comprehension Speed
From a linguistic point of view, words themselves have no meaning; it is people who give words meaning, and words are just symbols that carry meaning. For example, the word “book” has meaning only if we think that the symbol “book” represents the book in reality.
So, what is the purpose of our reading?
To read is to use one’s brain to understand the meaning of words, but reading words with one’s eyes is not beneficial in itself.
In other words, the speed of reading itself is useless, and only when the speed of comprehension keeps up is reading effective.
But they won’t tell you that, they will just tell you that there are people who read so fast that they can read 3,000 or even 20,000 words per minute! It makes you think it’s so amazing and desirable that you buy their product.
3. A Little Thinking
I personally feel that these “quick reads,” as absurd as they are, are here to stay.
On the one hand, it’s because of people’s knowledge anxiety. They are envious of those speed reading cowboys and always want to make fast reading.
On the other hand, it’s because the whole speed reading training industry has a huge chain of interests. Of course they will try to fabricate the validity of this theory, empty your pockets, tell you that you can learn to read fast in a few days, and then test it with children’s books when you graduate. 
Perhaps, to enhance their credibility, they’ll also tell you the story of Kempick, the original Rain Man.
“Kempick can “photographic memory”, which allows him to memorize the contents of 9,000 books at a glance and without forgetting them, almost word for word, godlike! See how cool he is? That’s the principle of our program!”
It is true that Kempick is a memory superhuman, but these people will not tell you that he has an IQ of 69 and almost no capacity for abstract understanding.
They won’t tell you that the so-called Memory Superhuman is somehow mentally retarded, which is why Kempick is also known as the Idiot Savant, a term used to describe people who have an extraordinary memory but whose thinking ability is seriously impaired.
After all this, some of you may want to say that you have disproved these “fast reading methods”, but what is the true definition of someone who can read fast?
Actually, fast reading can be acquired, but not quickly, and not in the way they boast.
Even when the right method is mastered, the acquisition process is usually extremely slow and even painful.
So, what is the right way? Why do some people read fast and others read slow? What does one go through between reading slowly and reading quickly?
To answer, it is important to understand that – reading is a subset of cognition, and from the perspective of cognitive science – these questions are actually enlightening.
In the next article, I will present my complete thoughts.
Only a few people in this world have ever known the truth, and today, you know at least part of it.
Congratulations on being in the minority.
Recent Comments