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<span style="font-size: 20px; font-weight: bold;
color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: arial;
line-height: 110%;">OPLIN 4cast #377: Reading
speed</span><br>
<!-- Make sure you modify the date of the 4Cast in this section -->
<span style="font-size: 11px; font-weight: normal;
color: rgb(102, 102, 102); font-style: italic;
font-family: arial;">March 19th, 2014</span></p>
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<p style="text-align: justify;font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><img
alt="Spritz app"
src="cid:part4.09060908.08050507@oplin.org"
align="left" height="48" width="140">Several
months ago, the <em>4cast</em> <a
href="http://www.oplin.org/4cast/?p=4078">looked
at the possibility</a> that shorter lines of
text delivered on digital devices could be easier
to read, especially for those who have problems
reading paper-printed text. Earlier this month, a
startup called Spritz got a lot of media attention
for pushing this concept to the limit, marketing a
technology that presents readers with one word at
a time up to 1,000 words per minute. As it
happens, this idea - known as rapid serial visual
presentation (RSVP) - is not new and has been
available for some time to users of mobile devices
through a number of <a
href="http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-apps-could-triple-your-reading-speed-180949945/">speed-reading
apps</a>, but Spritz' media blitz unleashed a
host of interesting articles about reading in
general.
</p>
<div> </div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/10/spritz-seed/">Speed-reader
startup Spritz closing $3.5M seed</a>
(TechCrunch/Natasha Lomas) "$1 million of the
seed was raised earlier, when the company was
known as Spritz Technology LLC (it's now Spritz
Technology Inc), but the rest of the round -
$2.54 million - is committed and due to be
closed within a couple of weeks, TechCrunch has
learned. Spritz's patent-pending technology
streams text at readers, one speedy word at a
time, to cut down the time the reader's eye has
to spend moving from word to word - letting them
consume text more quickly (or that's the
theory). To aid the reading process, Spritz
aligns words using what it refers to as an
'optimal recognition point method' which
presents the portion of the word that apparently
allows the reader to most quickly recognize it,
so the next word can be speedily pushed out."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://jhenderson.org/vclab/Blog/Entries/2014/3/7_Am_I_Reading_This_Right.html">Am
I reading this right?</a> (Henderson Blog/John
M. Henderson) "So Spritz sounds great, and even
somewhat scientific. 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. 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. 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')."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-03-07/new-speed-reading-apps-are-devilish-devices">New
speed-reading apps are devilish devices</a>
(Bloomberg View/Leonid Bershidsky) "A
college-level reader can process written data in
five 'gears,' Ronald Carver, the University of
Missouri professor and reading science
enthusiast, <a
href="http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40016440?uid=3738936&uid=2134&uid=380366123&uid=2&uid=70&uid=3&uid=380366113&uid=60&sid=21103606139957">wrote</a>
back in 1992. These are memorizing, learning,
'rauding,' skimming and scanning. The lowest
gear, meant for the best retention of facts,
names, dates and specific turns of phrase, runs
at less than 150 words a minute. The highest,
used to find a target word within a long text,
allows one to process 600 words per minute.
'Rauding,' at 300 words per minute, is our
'cruising' speed. The term is an amalgam of
'reading' and 'auditing.' It is roughly
equivalent to our listening comprehension
speed."</li>
<li style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><a
href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/03/03/spritz_spreeder_rsvp_technology_speed_reading_apps_are_amazing.html">Don't
mock speed-reading apps. They are
life-changing.</a> (Slate Future Tense/Jim
Pagels) "While I'm an unabashed fan of this
technology, RSVP has its detractors, who claim
that these kinds of applications increase
reading speeds at the expense of comprehension.
They argue that users are unable to scan around
the entire page or take moments to dwell on
particular passages that might merit deeper
contemplation. But an RSVP user can simply hit
pause or even go back to the original tab if he
needs a moment to think or wants to give
something a second glance, both of which I do
quite frequently. During my RSVP experience, I
haven't noticed any decline in comprehension; if
anything, I'm more focused on the material,
because I know I can't allow my mind to wander
or I'll lose my place, similar to how a runner
on a treadmill can't just stop whenever they get
tired."</li>
</ul>
<div style="text-align: left;"> </div>
<p style="text-align: left; font-size: 20px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;"><small><strong><em>Blink
fact:</em></strong></small><br>
</p>
<div style="text-align: justify; font-size: 16px;
font-family: arial; line-height: 110%;">If you're
ready for some hard science, <a
href="http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/jocn_a_00551">this
article</a> from the Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience explains the "attentional blink,"
"...a deficit in conscious perception of the
second of two targets [words] if it follows the
first within 200-500 msec."
</div>
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