Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site cornell.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxn!ihnp4!drutx!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!cornell!jqj From: jqj@cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson) Newsgroups: net.cog-eng Subject: Re: Speed Reading Message-ID: <2658@cornell.UUCP> Date: Sun, 23-Jun-85 06:57:09 EDT Article-I.D.: cornell.2658 Posted: Sun Jun 23 06:57:09 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 25-Jun-85 08:03:41 EDT References: <1573@orca.UUCP> <292@ucdavis.UUCP> Reply-To: jqj@cornell.UUCP (J Q Johnson) Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Lines: 25 Summary: In article <292@ucdavis.UUCP> ccrbrian@deneb.UUCP (Brian Reilly) writes: >The device you referred to is, I think, called a tachistiscope (sp?). >These were widely used in the 50's to train people to read faster, but the >argument against them is that you don't have one when you are reading a >book, so there is less transfer of skill than with techniques based on >work done with printed material. Actually, a T-scope, although it can be used for such purposes, is not at all suited for the task. A T-scope is actually a box with a bunch of electrically controlled mirrors and lights that allows an experimenter to present a small number of different pictures/stimuli to a subject in very rapid succession, with fine (millisecond) control over timing and excellent control over illumination and registration. Unfortunately, the number of fields (different pictures) is typically 3 or 4, and changing the picture in a field is typically done manually, so they are not well designed for presenting more than 3 or 4 stimuli in rapid succession. There has been a tremendous amount of research on eye movement and reading in the past 5 years or so. Could someone who knows this research please summarize? In particular, my understanding (am I correct?) is that a typical reading strategy is to occasionally glance back at previously scanned text (perhaps to save short term memory while processing a syntactic transformation?), and that forward-only pacing reduces comprehension (particularly of syntactically complex sentences?) by interfering with this.