The neurological science behind reading and comprehension speed

[Bio-Hazard]

Since I'm learning more and more about neuroscience, a creative idea came into my head. I figured that by studying neuroscience, one could figure out the best way to enhance reading speed.

 

What studies have been done on the brain that show the best way for someone to enhance their reading speed.

 

In other words, have there been studies done on the active neural connections that go on in the brain that increase or become stronger as a persons reading and comprehension speed begin to increase?

 

Did these connections do better during a certain reading enhacement procedure than the other?

[ecoli]

Since I'm learning more and more about neuroscience' date=' a creative idea came into my head. I figured that by studying neuroscience, one could figure out the best way to enhance reading speed.

 

What studies have been done on the brain that show the best way for someone to enhance their reading speed.

 

In other words, have there been studies done on the active neural connections that go on in the brain that increase or become stronger as a persons reading and comprehension speed begin to increase?

 

Did these connections do better during a certain reading enhacement procedure than the other?[/quote']

 

why is it important to read really fast?

[Bio-Hazard]

The faster you can read and comprehend, the faster you can learn.

But the keypoint here is not using some type of robotic brain addition, but instead using an alternative learning method.

Does more reading show growth in the comprehension process with neurological studies?

[ecoli]

The faster you can read and comprehend' date=' the faster you can learn.

But the keypoint here is not using some type of robotic brain addition, but instead using an alternative learning method.

Does more reading show growth in the comprehension process with neurological studies?[/quote']

 

Ok, I see what you're saying. You want to have some sort of mental exercises that allow you to strengthen your reading comprehension. I'm there are things like this... doesn't seem too outrageous to suggest. I'll do some google searches and see what comes up.

[Glider]

Reading is a skill and the way to increase speed is practice. A bit like learning to play the guitar. If you want to learn how to do a fast, steady tremolo, you just have to practice.

 

Comprehension is something else. You can read without understanding. e.g. If you know the pronunciation rules, you can read Spanish without being able to speak or understand it.

 

Comprehension is understanding and basically, the more you know, the more you will understand. If you bombard someone who doesn't know anything about a particular subject with lots of information on that subject, most of it will 'slide off' because they don't have any 'cognitive hooks' to hang it on. The new information doesn't hold meaning for them and so they will not be able to form links between the new information and stuff they already know.

 

Essentially, learning is a bit like growing a crystal. You need the germ (basic knowledge) in order to be able to expand upon it and allow it to grow. So, the more you know about something, the easier it will be to assimilate new relevant information and the faster your comprehension speed.

[zyncod]

You know, I've never actually believed in speed-reading as a way to synthesize new information. I can read very quickly under the right circumstances (I haven't ever taken a speed-reading course or anything, though), but that's usually novels. Reading papers or textbooks, I need at least 10x the amount of time per page; not to read the text, but to actually consciously integrate it. Speed reading, as I understand it, is used to gain a cursory familiarity with the terminology and subject matter. If that's the case, you might as well read an introductory textbook or a review - it will take just as much time and probably give you a better understanding of the subject. I think that for most people, they can read far faster than they can sythesize the data.

[RyanJ]

Interesting topic guys!

 

Speed reading or scan reading is sometimes used to quickly gather the basic informaiton on somehting for example I use speed reading when I need to get througha paragraph of work quickly and I get a basic idea of what tis saying and thats normally enough. If its not then I cna take a bit longer to go throug it more carefully and then I get exactly what it is trying to say.

 

The link between comprehension and speed reading seems to be that the safter you read the less time your brain has to think about what you have just read and so the less you understand though this is not always the case

 

Sometimes when I read fast I can still do the same as I normally do when I read more slowly - this is normally when I am already familiar with the topic though

 

I remember reading about one guy who could read two pages (One with each eye) of writing every 5 seconds and remember everything about it - hes a savant and thats just not normal!

 

Heres a question: Does anyone have trouble doing other things while you are reading say if someone is asking you a question?

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan Jones

[dttom]

I think it's something related LTP. I will be more familiar with the passages when you read more and more. The system in brain will take less time to do the same thing compare with the first time reading a passage. May being something like that, I'm not sure.

[ashennell]

I remember reading about one guy who could read two pages (One with each eye) of writing every 5 seconds and remember everything about it - hes a savant and thats just not normal!

 

That is certainly an impressive feat. Actual, 'normal' people can be trained to do two language tasks simultaneously. Maybe reading a page with each eye is not normally possible but I'm sure there have been load of tests using different combinations of listening to one or more voices, or reading from text, and vocally repeating information. I can't remember the exact format of these tests though.

 

As for reading speed, I would agree with most people so far - the intake rate is determined by comprehension rate which, I would guess, is affected by familiarity. Sometimes, if im reading a paper which isn't that enthralling I will find that I have continued to read 2 or 3 paragraphs while still thinking about the last reasonably intersesting sentence.

 

The system in brain will take less time to do the same thing compare with the first time reading a passage.

 

I'm sure if this is really the same as increasing reading speed. If you reread the same passage you will have already comprehended the content. As you become more familiar there is less info to obtain. This is like removing the rate -limiting comprehension part of the task so it not suprising that you get faster.

[ashennell]

Heres a question: Does anyone have trouble doing other things while you are reading say if someone is asking you a question?

 

Do you mean attention? I mean, if you pay attention to any task you will often tend to increase your threshold to other stimuli. Reading and reading novels in particular are effective at doing this becuase they contain complex structure - narrative, etc, etc, and heaps load of info that need to be processed. I would say that the effect you mention is pretty common. Perhaps there is a clinical condition that increases this effect, sort of like an anti-ADHD (or what ever it's official name is now).

 

I often ignore the time when I'm doing tasks - hey it's 1.00 in the morning already. goodnight.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

My typical reading speed is over 400 words per minute, and I can hit 1000 if I try (hard to maintain it though).

 

The faster you can read and comprehend, the faster you can learn.

This may be true, at least in my case. I have the ability to simply soak in information quickly--I very rarely studied at all in school, and got great grades.

Correlation does not necessarily mean causation, however, so perhaps greater intelligence could correlate with increased reading speed and learning ability.

[Helix]

There's a software that supposedly capitalizes on the fact that there can be mental excersises to increase reading speed. It's called EyeQ and through optical stimulation (following moving images, practice reading etc) it is supposed to up your reading speed.

 

Also there are speed reading courses which are pretty well-known, probably because President Kennedy was famed to have taken one.

 

I am suspicious about both of these as I haven't seen actual evidence that reading speed can be controlled, but who knows? There may be some things venture capitalism has found out that genetics hasn't.

[Bio-Hazard]

Comprehension is understanding and basically' date=' the more you know, the more you will understand. If you bombard someone who doesn't know anything about a particular subject with lots of information on that subject, most of it will 'slide off' because they don't have any 'cognitive hooks' to hang it on.

 

Essentially, learning is a bit like growing a crystal. You need the germ (basic knowledge) in order to be able to expand upon it and allow it to grow. So, the more you know about something, the easier it will be to assimilate new relevant information and the faster your comprehension speed.

[/quote']

 

This would have to do with hands on vs. book reading which is a great example. With such things there are physical implications that are interpreted and you become exposed to. When reading about something you could get a better grasp when reading something such as an origami book or a drawing book. Perhaps more of something in the arts.

 

Another interesting aspect to this would be how a person can instantly feel an emotion and interpret the word bitch as rude and deviant. Did you sense something from it?

 

We as people have been conformed to society, somewhat, to interpret these words and have an emotion to them. So when a person is reading, I hypothesis that they also have a type of emotion that comes with reading.

 

Which makes me wonder about something I've been thinking of lately which is how people who have greater learning rates have a lesser resistance to pain.

Thus, their emotional intensity would be increased drastically.

 

I'm assuming reading has a lot to do with the sapir-whorf thesis with how culture effects language. How our ways of life to our culture can effect how we read something. HATE PAIN DEATH CUTE BUNNY.

 

Such things are societal and environmental. Visual aspects that we've learned over life can help us excel in our ability to interpret something we read by stimulating ourselves with a quick emotional understanding of the world leading to a greater comprehension rate of the text.

 

What gets me more in this situation would be how the brain can instantly interpret words when we look at them. We don't really have to think about the word, we just read it, unless it is foreign.

 

With the word foreign we may even have an emotional and cultural understanding as something different, misunderstood, weird. Leading to a quicker comprehension of the word from our real world interpretation.

 

As for reading speed' date=' I would agree with most people so far - the intake rate is determined by comprehension rate which, I would guess, is affected by familiarity. Sometimes, if im reading a paper which isn't that enthralling I will find that I have continued to read 2 or 3 paragraphs while still thinking about the last reasonably intersesting sentence.

[/quote']

 

Familiarity would most likely be a large part to this because if we are not familiar with something, we can not easily browse through it.

 

Recently I was going through wikipedia and I thought I'd take a stab at speed reading. As I read the article I noticed I comprehended everything at an excellerating rate, the interesting side to this is that I could read the words a lot quicker, but to do so, my cognitive processes of visual information must have been sped up. For instance, when I saw carbon, I had to associate it quickly with things such as graphite, diamond, C12, and it was quickly understood. It seems that to be able to speed-read, one must be able to quickly adapt to the word they are reading along with enhancing the cognitive processes.

 

My assumption to this was that my quick visualization was not involuntary unlike reading a word such as hate. There was a voluntary request for me to excel the associations of what I knew of the word. Does this take extra glucose? Perhaps I have conscious control over brain functions somehow? What chemistry changes that makes the visualization "click in"?

 

Now the thing I'm trying to get out of this thread is the neurological processes and studies on the brain (physical, not psychological) that have been done to show what chemicals and physiological features of the brain exactly change.

 

To tell you the truth, it seems closely related to a psychotic episode to be able to quickly learn and associate.

 

Correlation does not necessarily mean causation' date=' however, so perhaps greater intelligence could correlate with increased reading speed and learning ability.[/quote']

 

I'm thinking by "intelligence" you mean experience. Intelligence is up for debate as to what it is, but I'm not going there. I am simply stating the ability for people to be able to make connections within a text to their current understandings and the ability to adapt their current knowledge allowing them to read quicker, or nonexistant knowledge with the ability to asorb it by assimilating a neurological response to it.

[Glider]

I remember reading about one guy who could read two pages (One with each eye)...

Ryan Jones

Chameleons have the ability to move each eye independently and to integrate the disparate information coming in from each eye. Humans don't, not even savants.