Apps Intended to Speed Up Reading Rate May Reduce Comprehension
The Washington Post:
Readers of this space learned a few weeks ago about Spritz, an app that promises to dramatically increase your reading speed by converting text to a fast-moving sequence of individual words or phrases. Because the text is moving, your eyeballs don’t have to, so you get through words faster. Such speed-reading apps have been getting a lot of attention, but a newstudy published in the journal Psychological Science warns of a downside: You may read faster but learn less.
In “Don’t Believe What You Read (Only Once),” researchers from the University of California at San Diego say that the apps’ manipulation of text denies readers the opportunity to “regress” — that is, go back and reread a word or sentence — and this had a demonstrable negative effect on comprehension.
Read the whole story: The Washington Post
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