Pausing on individual words

Did you see your partner’s eyes jumping from word to word, briefly pausing on each? It looks a bit like an old-fashioned typewriter juddering across the page until it gets to the end and you push back the carriage to start the next line. In order for the eyes to take a mental ‘photograph’ they must be still. Imagine looking out of a train window at a sign on the platform as it goes through a station. In order to read it you must either move your head or dart your eyes left and right to compensate for the motion of the train. You are often unaware that your eyes are moving and pausing as this happens subconsciously. As your gaze flits from visual scene to scene, the brain edits out the blurred image that occurs whilst the eyes are travelling and you only perceive what they take in whilst stationary.

Each time the eye comes to rest, it takes in an image of the word that it is focused on. These pauses are called ‘fixations’ and last between a quarter and one-and-a-half seconds. Slow readers have a long duration for each fixation, focusing on one or two words at a time, occasionally taking two fixations to assimilate longer or unfamiliar words.

Skipping backwards

Did you notice the eyes darting backwards before the end of a line? This has two causes, backskipping and regression. Backskipping is the habitual re-reading of what has just been read. Regression is the conscious process of re-reading, caused by uncertainty of what was read and the desire to clarify.

Wandering

Finally, you may have noticed the eyes wandering off the line or the page entirely. Even if your eyes do not stray, your attention often will. You feel you have been reading but you have actually been thinking about what you will have for lunch, your wife/husband or girl/boyfriend, or an important essay, meeting or appointment. It is perfectly natural for your mind to stray, especially when reading slowly. Your brain craves stimulation. If the information reaching it from the eyes is coming in at a snail’s pace, it is bound to go off into your imagination to seek something else to pay attention to.

Maintaining focus

Have you ever seen someone look at their watch and then asked them the time? They almost invariably look at their watch again before telling you. When they looked the first time they didn’t focus sufficiently well to register the time in their memory. It is amazing how little we actually notice. If you ask someone to look at their watch to tell you the time and then ask if their watch face has Roman numerals, Arabic numbers or even no numbers at all, they will probably be unable to tell you. They may not even notice whether the watch has a second hand or not.

There is a famous demonstration of this on the internet used to promote road safety. Just Google ‘dancing bear basketball’ and you can watch the video. It consists of a basketball game. You are asked to watch closely and count the number of times the ball is passed by one of the teams. Because your focus is on counting, this is all you notice. If you watch it a second time you will notice that in the middle of the game, someone in a bear costume came onto the court and did a dance. Even though this was really blatant you would have almost certainly missed it. This phenomenon is known as inattention blindness. Professor Richard Wiseman from the University of Hertfordshire has also demonstrated a similar phenomenon known as change blindness. You can find this at www.quirkology.com/USA/
Video_ColourChangingTrick.shtml. I won’t spoil it by telling you what happens.

Visual and mental focus are very important factors in your success in reading. People often complain of an inability to concentrate. In actual fact they are continually concentrating. Some of the time they are concentrating on the page, at other times they are concentrating on the ceiling, an attractive individual that has just walked past, or their inner thoughts and imagination. It is just a matter of deciding where you will direct your concentration. You can focus your concentration in various ways. Think about why you are reading. Is it to reach a practical goal such as to pass an exam, achieve promotion at work or some other aspiration? If you can’t answer why you are reading, there is probably little point in doing so. We will consider motivation in more detail below (Chapter 4).

Have you ever read a novel where you were totally absorbed in the story, so much so that you ‘couldn’t put the book down’? In that case it is the story that captivates your attention but it is equally possible to be captivated by non-fiction. The faster you read, the more engaged you become in the material. If you read at close to the speed of thought you have little time for your attention to wander. To maintain focus simply tell yourself that you will keep your eyes and attention on the page.

Reducing the duration of fixations

Imagine you are driving down a Swiss autobahn at 80 miles an hour. Suddenly you go round a curve in the road and see an entirely new vista before you. In a split second you are able to notice cars and lorries in front of you, trees and flowers beside the road and mountains in the distance. If you can take in all this visual information virtually instantaneously and effortlessly it is an easy task to fixate on a word for a quarter of a second whilst reading.

Psychological studies using a tachistoscope (a device that displays an image for a specific amount of time), conducted chiefly by the Royal Air Force, showed that with training an average person can identify minute images flashed on the screen for only one five-hundredth of a second (2 ms). Although the images used were of aeroplanes, the results have implications for reading.

The shorter your fixation time, the faster you read. If you currently take one second per fixation, reducing this to half a second will double your speed or reducing to a quarter of a second will give a four-fold increase.

Taking in meaningful chunks of words

The number of fixations can have a massive impact on your speed. As we have seen, slow readers take in one or two words at a time. With practice your eyes can focus on four to six words in a single fixation, depending on length. So if you take in twice as many words in each fixation you can double your speed again.

Chunking is a well-known technique in memory. Short-term memory can hold between five and nine pieces of data at the same time. If you have an eleven-digit phone number this is too much to store. Chunking overcomes this problem by breaking information into manageable blocks. If you have to remember the number 01825708263, it is easier to memorise it as three chunks, 01825 708 263. This ‘takes up’ three spaces in memory rather than eleven.

Many readers avoid taking in groups of words at high speed because they are afraid that they will miss vital information. When I was at primary school we were given cards with a piece of text to read and comprehension questions. I still remember the exact phrase used was ‘Read this passage slowly and carefully’. It was written in good faith at the time but has doubtlessly damaged the prospects of countless would-be fast readers. If you believe that the way to good comprehension is to read ‘slowly and carefully’ with one word at a time and you get poor results, you will inevitably try harder. You’ll read even more slowly, more carefully and your results will get worse. The more you try, the worse it gets and you will be locked into a downward spiral. One of the most destructive forces in learning is believing a false formula to be true and then putting energy into pursuing it. If you believe the best way to escape from quicksand is to struggle you will sink. If you are a strong, fit athlete and able to struggle more vigorously you will sink even faster.

When you take in groups of words, try to take in meaningful chunks. These act like building blocks that the brain assembles to make sense of what you are reading. Doing this will massively boost comprehension and you will end up with a positive upward spiral.

‘I say, which would you rather do: eat a bowl of rice kernel by kernel, or take a spoonful to get a good taste?’

Evelyn Wood, speed reading pioneer

Avoid backskipping

Backskipping and regression account for a 10 to 20 per cent reduction in potential reading speed. Research shows that regression is unnecessary in most cases as meaning can more easily be clarified by the following sentences and paragraphs. Trust that you will take in information by reading each sentence once.

When I was learning to ski, I had a brief period where I would be hurtling down a slope, seemingly doing well but would shift my weight too far back and effectively sit down, coming to an ignominious stop. It felt like I was going too fast. Once I accepted that I could travel that fast and control my descent, coming to a stop at the bottom, I was able to improve. It was all about trust.

Believe in yourself, believe that you will assimilate and comprehend information without the need to re-read sentences and you will succeed. As Henry Ford said, ‘If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.’