On Monday 22 October 2007 03:35:33 pm, Russell Wallace wrote: > On 10/22/07, J Storrs Hall, PhD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Attention -- fovea -- saccade -- serial -- chunking -- frame. > > > > Those higher functions have to be there anyway. Is there any evidence that we > > can recognize multiple primitives simultaneously? > > Yes. Speed-reading in particular, deliberately turns off the saccade > mechanism by which we normally read text, and instead keeps the fovea > near the center of the column, relying on the visual cortex to > recognize all (or at least a large chunk) of the words in the current > line of text, in parallel. And when we do this, we get more than mere > activation levels associated with each word - all the syntax-parsing > machinery etc still works.
I don't buy that there is parallel recognition going on. If one reads a lot, one forms chunks up to the size of phrases. There is some interesting high-level interpretation happening, cf tricks like Paris in the the spring (seen as "Paris in the spring" by most fast readers). "Research conducted on speed reading experts who claim to be able to read at over 1,000 words per minute with full comprehension has found that their claims are false (Homa 1983). Even speed reading rates of between 1000-2000 word/min have been found to result in comprehension levels at around 70% or lower. Also, when presented with two paragraphs of combined but unrelated material, speed reading experts claimed that they understood it but were completely unaware that it consisted of two obviously different passages mixed together (Allyn & Bacon, 1987). "One interesting outcome from research into speed reading is that speed readers tend to poorly assess their own comprehension level when compared to normal readers who are simply instructed to skim a text (Allyn & Bacon, 1987). The skimming group was found to be better at extracting the details out of a text than speed readers. This may be explained with reference to speed reading practices training out the ability to judge comprehension (Allyn & Bacon, 1987) and leading the reader to adopt misconceptions about reading (Harris and Sipay 1990). "Professional reading rate researchers' general advice about speed reading courses is simply not to enroll... " (Wikipedia) ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=56447484-384c5b
