The birth, history and development of speed reading

Those interested in speed reading often wonder how the methodologies were formulated, what they are based on, when they appeared and how they were developed. After all, do they have any scientific background?

The methodologies are being developed all the time, but the facts, related to speed reading, appeared quite long time ago. The earliest fact which can be considered as one of the first in speed reading was the discovery, made by of French eye-doctor Emil Javal in 1879. He noticed, that an eye can read more than one word at once. His research proved that reading is not continuous eye movement through the line of words. We comprehend the information, when eyes stop to fix the view. The physiology suggests that eyes always fix separate views.

That is similar to the constant photo shooting from the different angles, but the brain processes it to one complete image. Only static eye absorbs the fixed information in a few milliseconds. Specific exercises can train the eye to make the fixation longer and more stable, therefore,  get more information at a time. The more trained our eyes are, the faster and the more effectively we can process the visual information.

Good reaction also helps to read faster. For example, tachistoscope, a device similar to cinema equipment, was used for education purposes during World War II . It was intended to train the US pilots to recognize the silhouettes of the other planes and to react to them. The silhouettes appeared on the screen for a few milliseconds and the pilots had to notice as many of them as possible. The air forces changed these pictures into separate words. Four words were shown in 0.05 of the second, and the participants of the experiment managed to recognize and understand the words much faster than normally. The experiment proved that practice can improve the pace of recognizing and understanding the words.

(to be continued...)