Uncovering the Mystery of High Reading Speeds

[heman]

what is your reading speed??

And if by the way,it is high..what factors are responsible for that..

Have you ever seen anyone having a reading speed of 3000 or more than that...i don't know how that's possible,,doesn't it mean the person has enormous control over his mind..

 

[Bladibla]

what is your reading speed??

And if by the way,it is high..what factors are responsible for that..

Have you ever seen anyone having a reading speed of 3000 or more than that...i don't know how that's possible,,doesn't it mean the person has enormous control over his mind..

First of all: Most people don't time when they read stuff. Usually, they are too into the material to even think about that, and when they do, they forget the content and get angry, like me.

I don't think reading fast has anything to do with 'control over the mind'. What is 'controlling over the mind' mean scientifically anyway? Its a matter of reading more books to train yourself to become a 'fast' reader.

 

[heman]

Bladila,,i can actually give you an example...like i am sure Les,,since he is doing meditation for 30 years would be having higher reading speed along with higher comprehension..thats just my intution because atleast i am sure that his mind would not be giving him Luxury of unwanted thoughts much...

And i believe that if person is having such phenomenal reading speed then there is something really different..

 

[Bladibla]

Bladila,,i can actually give you an example...like i am sure Les,,since he is doing meditation for 30 years would be having higher reading speed along with higher comprehension..thats just my intution because atleast i am sure that his mind would not be giving him Luxury of unwanted thoughts much...

And i believe that if person is having such phenomenal reading speed then there is something really different..

The question you asked was:

what is your reading speed??

And if by the way,it is high..what factors are responsible for that..

I don't know any 'les' other than 'Les Sleeth'. You are presuming he has 'fast reading speed' which is based on just on your intuition. Just with what evidence are you claiming that he is reading fast here?

Lets say for the sake of argument, that your intuition is right.

Your reply:

Bladila,,i can actually give you an example...like i am sure Les,,since he is doing meditation for 30 years would be having higher reading speed along with higher comprehension..thats just my intution because atleast i am sure that his mind would not be giving him Luxury of unwanted thoughts much

Doesn't that answer your own question?

 

[heman]

Doesn't that answer your own question?

No..




Bladila,,Truth is i don't know and you don't know so let's know from others what they know..

 

[JamesU]

In a 'speed reading test', I got 367 wpm. I'm probably faster, as I've heard, it's just kind of annoying reading something while you're trying to go as fast as you can and its completely uninteresting to you...

 

[RVBuckeye]

The fastest reader I know of is Kim Peek. He was the guy they based the movie "Rain Man" on. I saw a show on him and they interviewed his father. His father claims he reads both pages of a book simultanelously with each eye reading a page. As I recall he could read both pages in around 10 seconds. What's most remarkable is he has total recall of what he read.

Just a little background on him
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/kimpeek.cfm

 

[Moonbear]

Bladila,,i can actually give you an example...like i am sure Les,,since he is doing meditation for 30 years would be having higher reading speed along with higher comprehension..thats just my intution because atleast i am sure that his mind would not be giving him Luxury of unwanted thoughts much...

And i believe that if person is having such phenomenal reading speed then there is something really different..

That's not an example, that's unsubstantiated conjecture. What reason would you have to think meditation would in any way be correlated to reading speed?

 

[heman]

That's not an example, that's unsubstantiated conjecture. What reason would you have to think meditation would in any way be correlated to reading speed?

i think that's logical and see this way/...
Meditation =>Mental Peace =>higher concenteration =>lesser effort in reading =>more speed...

I can be wrong but the ball is in the court of Les Sleeth,,he will prove me wrong or right,,


Rubey...thats exciting information

 

[Moonbear]

I can be wrong but the ball is in the court of Les Sleeth,,he will prove me wrong or right,,

No, I think the ball remains in your court to back up your claim with some real evidence, not wild speculation.

 

[heman]

This is not a wild speculation...you are an biologist ,,think it over..you will realize that...
There are different kind of mental states you must have observed and there are some mental states which promote effective comprehension and i think Meditation unobjectively enhances that...

By the way what is your reading speed??

 

[Evo]

I have never seen anything that corelates meditation with faster reading. I agree with Moonbear. One person's reading speed would be meaningless anyway.

 

[zoobyshoe]

i think that's logical and see this way/...
Meditation =>Mental Peace =>higher concenteration =>lesser effort in reading =>more speed...

I have to agree with this in principle. Meditation does indeed sharpen your mental faculties. I'm sure an experienced meditator could read much faster and retain more than they did prior to starting the practise. Thing is, speed reading, or rushing to get anything done, is exactly the sort of thing you no longer care for after meditating for a while.

 

[mattmns]

Depends, I usually read very slowly when doing math/problems, and just skim when I read over books that I could care less about it. Also, why does reading speed matter, I know many people who read really fast, and then when are asked a question about what they read have no idea.

 

[konartist]

Test this out:
http://www.readingsoft.com/

232 wpm - 72% comp

 

[heman]

nobody said anything about their reading speed...isn't there anything penetrating about reading speed..

 

[AngelShare]

what is your reading speed??

And if by the way,it is high..what factors are responsible for that..

Have you ever seen anyone having a reading speed of 3000 or more than that...i don't know how that's possible,,doesn't it mean the person has enormous control over his mind..

I don't know about that...my Grandmother is one of the smartest people I know and she's in her 70's. She isn't a fast reader but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has read more than she has in her lifetime as she's always reading something. She reads every night until about 2AM, gets up at 9AM, and does it again that same night. I'd say, at her age, that's a pretty good amount of control she has there.

As for me, though, it depends upon what I'm reading and how interested I am. It also depends upon my frame of mind-- if I'm tired, I can't read period. If my mind feels "sharp" that day, probably pretty fast, not lightning quick but it works. On average, though, my reading speed is, at least to me, pretty slow. I'm stressed out a lot so reading has become a hassle for me...I've gotten so bad that I'm actually worried. (Noises distract me, doors shutting, etc. My own thoughts even distract me... )

However, it took me less than a week to read the 6th Harry Potter book (652 pgs.) and about the same amount of time to read the other larger ones like Order of the Phoenix (870 pgs.) and the Goblet of Fire (734 pgs.). Oddly enough, Angela's Ashes (368 pgs.) took me about two or three months...hated McCourt's style of writing.

 

[AngelShare]

Test this out:
http://www.readingsoft.com/

232 wpm - 72% comp

Cool test.

182 wpm - 82% comp

Not great but not too bad I suppose...

 

[heman]

The fastest reader I know of is Kim Peek. He was the guy they based the movie "Rain Man" on. I saw a show on him and they interviewed his father. His father claims he reads both pages of a book simultanelously with each eye reading a page. As I recall he could read both pages in around 10 seconds. What's most remarkable is he has total recall of what he read.

Just a little background on him
http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/savant/kimpeek.cfm

The movie RainMan projected kim peek in the movie as Raymond who remembers everything he reads,has a very high processing power but nowhere its revealed in a way that he has highest reading speed in the movie that way...

 

[AngelShare]

The character of Raymond wouldn't have to be exactly like this Kim Peek person, just similar as it's said that he was the inspiration behind the movie. Apparently, it's not that far fetched; someone else heard the same thing here. You'll have to register/log into read the post if you're interested.

 

[konartist]

Oddly enough, Angela's Ashes (368 pgs.) took me about two or three months...hated McCourt's style of writing.

Why is that? I read the Ender's Game series in less than two weeks and I can't finish reading this stupid novel required for English. I think when it is required something in our minds just clicks off.

 

[AngelShare]

I hated how he wrote-- his sentences often resembled paragraphs, commas weren't used where they should have been, and would it have killed the guy to use quotation marks when someone is speaking?

I was just forced to realize how much I appreciate such things when reading his book, that's all. I know I'm not perfect but I'm not the writer here.

 

[RVBuckeye]

The movie RainMan projected kim peek in the movie as Raymond who remembers everything he reads,has a very high processing power but nowhere its revealed in a way that he has highest reading speed in the movie that way...

as info...

It took Kim Peek just over an hour to read Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October. Four months later, when asked to give the name of the book's Russian radio operator, Peek quoted the entire relevant passage.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,3605,1664652,00.html

There seems to be only one person who can read at such speeds with near-perfect comprehension. His name is Kim Peek and he has the ability to read two pages simultaneously, one with each eye, with 98% retention. Nobody knows how he does it but he was born without a corpus callosum, that bundle of nerves that connects the right and left hemispheres of the brain. However, others have also been born with no corpus callosum, or have had it surgically disconnected, without resulting in an increase in reading or retention abilities. Kim can recall most of the contents of some 7,600 books. But, since nobody knows how Kim Peek does it, nobody can teach this skill to others.

http://skepdic.com/speedreading.html

 

[Alkatran]

470 WPM, 8/11 comprehension

This was last night when I was tired, just before going to bed.

 

[siddharth]

755 WPM, 7/11 comprehension

I started to read the text, got bored, skipped to the end. Most of the answers in the questionnaire were guessable. So that's not an accurate test of ones reading speed or comprehension.

 

[BobG]

Being able to read two separate pages at the same time would be a definite advantage.

There's two tricks to improving your reading speed even without extra practice. Don't move your eyes from side to side and don't internally verbalize the words as you read. In fact, one way to do better on that speed reading test is to narrow the screen before you start - there's a reason most books are broken into two columns on each page.

Even so, comprehension is a lot more important than speed - so the important thing is being able to recognize which parts you can blow through and which parts you'd better slow down and think about as you read. Generally, the better the book, the slower I read it, since I'm almost running two separate tracks as I read.

For the test, I had 501 with 82% (ironically, I missed the question about the comprehension percentage for the average reader and the sprinter example was too lame to be worth remembering).

 

[hypatia]

I read very fast..there's little tricks to it..like teaching yourself to skip words.

I read fast, tricks..skip words.

 

[BobG]

I read very fast..there's little tricks to it..like teaching yourself to skip words.

I read fast, tricks..skip words.

I agree with the first line, but I don't think it's special enough to make me skip.

 

[hypatia]

aww ca'mon give us a little skip!

 

[Moonbear]

AngelShare, good point. I definitely read a lot faster when someone has written things using correct grammar and punctuation. I hate when I start reading a sentence and have to backtrack 3 times because a comma is missing somewhere. And, of course if I'm enjoying reading something, I just breeze through it in no time, while something that's not much fun to read takes forever. Part of that is the ease of becoming distracted by other things. If I'm really enjoying something, I'm not noticing anything else around me, and am completely focused on what I'm reading, so it goes quickly. If I'm not enjoying it, I start thinking about other things mid-sentence, so have to go back and re-read, or I find myself staring out the window, etc.

I've never cared about reading speed since the 8th grade when they tried to teach us all speed reading. I was always one of the slower readers, but my comprehension was 100%. I prefer that over being a faster reader and missing things. Then again, the thought of trying to speed read slows me more than anything else...I'm focused on remembering all the tricks rather than what words my eyes are scanning over.