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641 Comments
- prisoner24601, on 07/28/2008, -4/+1913I occurred to me that people who look at spreeder and have never before really tried speed reading might not quite "get it" when they test it. "The text I pasted in flashes at me one word at a time. Interesting, but why? Is this just some sort of entertaining visual effect or something?" Fair question, and no.
When you read, you normally fall into what's called "subvocalization" which simply means you sound out and pronounce each word mentally. It's like your brain goes trough the process of preparing to verbalize every word of every sentence, but just doesn't send the signals to your vocal cords to *actually* pronounce the words. You don't even notice it really, but you will naturally read at pretty much the same speed you would speak.
Speed reading is simply disciplining yourself to NOT try to subvocalize each word. You brain is actually very capable of this once you get used to it. The problem is that on a written page, you have a second problem that you have to train your eyes to actually "scan" a word and then MOVE to the next one and (depending on the layout of the page, font size, etc.) that is also a challenge. (That's why people who speed read with physical paper books will often move their finger quickly back and forth across the page, or use an index card and drag it down the page to reveal lines at the rate the want to read, but help keep their eyes from wandering.
Anyway, obviously doing this with software where the program breaks the sentences down and flashes just one word at a time remove the entire "mechanical eye scanning" sort of issue. I've looked at a bunch of programs to do this for years, but spreeder is the first free one I've found.
Drop some text into it and run it. The only "problem" is that the default speed isn't really all that fast (which is probably why some people try it and "don't get it" since they can actually subvocalize that fast) so they aren't getting any benefit yet. The magic is in gradually bumping up the speed you are using and it will get you to the point where the part of your brain that subvocalizes starts "falling behind."
Now push it just a little faster and your brain will "give up" trying to subvocalize, but (probably much to your surprise) you will actually have very high comprehension of what you just read anyway. In fact, then as you push higher over time (and not that much time actually, your brain is VERY good at this once you get used to it) you'll find you have VERY high comprehension at speed that would have sounded absurd. I've honetly shocked myself at the word per mintue my brain can recognize when I'm not trying to pronounce them in my head at the same time.
Basically you are training your brain to directly connect visualized words to their known meaning without having to go through the "detour" of your brain's speech center. (Or something like that...) - nolesfan247, on 07/28/2008, -3/+887I stuck this short novel into spreeder; this thing is great!
- bokep, on 07/28/2008, -70/+804***** you, two of my friends died reading too fast.
- randomerratum, on 07/28/2008, -8/+483Try this:
| | | | | || ||| |||| ||||| |||||| ||||||| |||||||| ||||||||| |||||||||| ||||||||||| |||||||||| ||||||||| |||||||| ||||||| |||||| ||||| |||| ||| || |
_ __ ___ ____ _____ ______ _______ ________ _________ __________ __________ __________ __________ _________@ _______@_ _______@__ ______@___ ______@___ _____@____ ____@_____ ___@______ __@_______ _@________ @_________ _@________ __@_______ ___@______ _____@____ ______@___ _______@__ ________@_ _________@ __________ _________ ________ _______ ______ _____ ____ ___ __ _ * _ -_ -R_ -RA_ -RAN_ -RAND_ -RANDO_ -RANDOM_ -RANDOME_ -RANDOMER_ -RANDOMERR_ -RANDOMERRA_ -RANDOMERRAT_ -RANDOMERRATU_ -RANDOMERRATUM_ -RANDOMERRATUM_ -RANDOMERRATUM_ -RANDOMERRATUM_ . .. ... .... ..... ...... ....... ........ ......... .......... .........t ........th .......the ......the_ .....the_e ....the_en ...the_end ...the_end ...the_end
...yeah, I know I'm supercool. - VBShadow, on 07/28/2008, -8/+460I had to use spreeder to read your post.
- captnkurt, on 07/28/2008, -1/+314You're just now getting to this comment? What took you so long?
- VivaNOLA, on 07/28/2008, -4/+198Oh my god! Not only was I able to read faster, but it magically sucked all of the pleasure out of the act as well! Thanks!
- GeneralFailure0, on 07/28/2008, -17/+185BUT COULD THEY RUN CRYSIS???
- HP844182, on 07/28/2008, -4/+169Your comment was a good candidate to try this little applet out
- edein, on 07/28/2008, -10/+1738m==D
8=m=D
8==mD
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8m==D
8=m=D
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8m==D
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8m==D
8=m=D
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8m==D
8=m=D
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8=m=D* - m4csrgh3yk3v, on 07/28/2008, -23/+183tl;dr
- phantom_mullet, on 07/28/2008, -4/+161I didn't really feel like reading everything you wrote, so I tried pasting it in the speed reader application at 800 WPM. I was surprised how well I was able to keep up with what you were saying.
Dugg. - rentmitchum, on 07/28/2008, -7/+147I'm over 9000!!!
- stukdog, on 07/28/2008, -13/+136I wish I had spreeder to read this comment.
Just kidding, good explanation. - bluesbyrd, on 07/28/2008, -1/+112Ya know, that's what's great about the internet - somebody puts something cool up, and someone else uses it to do something completely different, like turning a word by word reader into an animation machine
go for it! all you ascii movie artists .....
hats off to randomerratum - he is, indeed, supercool .... - insomniacal, on 07/28/2008, -1/+110Whoa, I cranked it up to 600wpm and am completely weirded out. My brain can actually follow it. I feel like I'm almost losing the train of thought, but I never lose it completely. On the other hand, it makes me want to pull away, like the ideas are being crammed too fast -- like sucking on a fire hose. Absolutely bizarre.
- captnkurt, on 07/28/2008, -2/+100I'm just starting out, but so far I can already read one-word sentences at over 1,000,000 WPM!
- zionKing, on 07/28/2008, -1/+98I can pee 10 feet
- Nonplussed, on 07/28/2008, -1/+84Most enlightening Digg comment ever.
- PorchSong, on 07/28/2008, -3/+83You are completely missing the point. Writers rarely (good writers, that is) put in wasted words. All the words and how they are puncutated etc. are there for a reason--to create mood and timing. Scanning might get you the "gist" of what you are reading, but you miss so much. Best quick analogy I can give is Beethoven's 9th. The entire song is based off of: da, da, da, dum and how he plays around that. You could sum up the symphany with just "da, da, da, dum" but you would miss richness of everything else around it.
I would agree to skimming news articles to get to the "meat" of a story, but a novel? - iXneonXi, on 07/28/2008, -1/+79VTEC Just Kicked In Yo
- AceSuperfly, on 07/28/2008, -9/+84Buried for inaccurate description. It is not a java applet, its JavaScript!! Digg users, where have all the nerds and geeks gone? Has the whole world gone crazy? Am I the only one around here who gives a ***** about the rules? Mark it zero!
I do like spreeder. - TnTBass, on 07/28/2008, -4/+78***** you, two of my friends died from bitching about internet memes.
- ThankTheCheese, on 07/28/2008, -5/+75I had to put it to 150 wpm before I could follow.
dyslexia FTL :( - koanage, on 07/27/2008, -6/+72This is really cool, especially the bookmarklet.
- chaos7, on 07/28/2008, -4/+70you can use spreeder to read his comment
- luke374, on 07/28/2008, -4/+69I compiled all of the "two friends died" comments I saw from yesterday here:
http://digg.com/comedy/Digg_we_have_a_meme_problem
... this meme is being ridiculously overused. - mandraque, on 07/28/2008, -5/+61ok how do i unburry the story?
- diggystardust, on 07/28/2008, -0/+52Sorry, I was watching randomerratum's ascii animation
- troopa, on 07/28/2008, -0/+47Wow, I pee urine. Can you teach me how to pee feet?
/lame joke is lame, I know. :( - Galume, on 07/28/2008, -0/+46Shouldn't that be: "dyslexia...LFT?"
- irishjays, on 07/28/2008, -3/+47Do you know what Marsellus Wallace looks like?
- goldenratiophi, on 07/28/2008, -9/+45I used your post to test spreeder.
/originality - heysuburbia, on 07/28/2008, -10/+46I can do around 600 wpm my first try.
Here is a test for "normal" reading speed (So you compare):
http://mindbluff.com/askread.htm - ck1223, on 07/28/2008, -0/+35I've always heard about this, but never thought it was actually useful. Maybe I'm wrong?
My question is, if you were reading a story, wouldn't you miss parts of the book? Like, jokes for instance? If these words are going by fast enough for you to not sub vocalize, would you actually start laughing if something funny blazed by? Does the enjoyment of reading a book go away?
I would love to learn this technique, because there are plenty of books I'd like to get through, but I'm a fairly slow reader. - Pic0, on 07/28/2008, -1/+35I was able to use the long text comment above and get 600wpm but when I tried it on another digg article, I had to lower it to 500-550wpm to understand the story. Here is a clip:
Cheryl Schiltz feels like she is perpetually falling. And because she feels like she is falling, she falls. When she stands up without support, she looks as if she were on a precipice, about to plummet. First her head wobbles and tilts to one side and her arms reach out to try to stabilise her stance. Soon her whole body is moving chaotically back and forth, like a person walking a tightrope in that frantic see-saw moment before losing his balance - except that both her feet are firmly planted on the ground, wide apart. When she tries to walk she has to hold on to a wall, and still she staggers like a drunk.
For Cheryl there is no peace, even after she has fallen to the floor. I ask her, does the sense of falling go away once she has landed? 'There have been times,' Cheryl says, 'when I literally lose the sense of the feeling of the floor… and an imaginary trapdoor opens up and swallows me.' Even when she has fallen, she feels that she is still falling, perpetually, into an infinite abyss.
Cheryl's problem is that her vestibular apparatus, the sensory organ for the balance system, does not work. Soon after her problem began, she lost her job as an international sales representative and now lives on a disability allowance of $1,000 a month. She has a new-found fear of growing old. And she has a rare form of anxiety that has no name.
An unspoken and yet profound aspect of our well-being is based on having a normally functioning sense of balance. The balance system gives us our sense of orientation in space. Its vestibular apparatus consists of three semi-circular canals in the inner ear that tell us when we are upright and how gravity is affecting our bodies by detecting motion in three-dimensional space. One canal detects movement in the horizontal plane, another in the vertical plane, and another when we are moving forwards or backwards. The signals from the vestibular apparatus go along a nerve to a specialised clump of neurons in the brain, the vestibular nuclei, which process them, then send commands to our muscles to adjust themselves.
I am with Cheryl, and Paul Bach-y-Rita, a leading pioneer in understanding brain 'plasticity', and his team at a lab in the University of Wisconsin Medical School. Yuri Danilov, a biophysicist, analyses data they are gathering. He says, 'Cheryl has lost her vestibular system - 95 to 100 per cent.' - Coaleh, on 07/28/2008, -3/+36What? 9000?!
- MMaster23, on 07/28/2008, -1/+34mah brain .... *splatter*
- recruz, on 07/28/2008, -0/+31yes- but did you see the dancing bear?
- irishjays, on 07/28/2008, -1/+32http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNT5zvd3g2M
- motioneso, on 07/28/2008, -4/+34my dad can beat up your dad
- noen, on 07/28/2008, -8/+38ohhhhh, flash make Hulk brain hurt.
Too. many. words.
Hulk smash! - toomanymirrors, on 07/28/2008, -1/+31I have been using the RSVP Reader toolbar for Firefox for years now to do this: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/214 ...
- tapo, on 07/28/2008, -4/+33Wikipedia sez: Subvocalizing is an inherent part of reading and understanding a word, and micro-muscle tests suggest that subvocalizing is impossible to eliminate. Attempting to stop subvocalizing is potentially harmful to comprehension, learning, and memory.
- tolstoi78, on 07/28/2008, -1/+27"Too Long; Didn't Read" = tl;dr
- inactive, on 07/28/2008, -0/+26You found the marble in the oatmeal?
- dezholling, on 07/28/2008, -0/+25No, I'm sure they don't. However, I would not be surprised if they mentally go through the "hand motions" associated with each word.
- rrbaker, on 01/15/2009, -2/+27I can crush ice with my mind.
- Andrwmorph, on 07/28/2008, -1/+26A 3rd grader could probably also figure out how to turn up the speed.
Unlike you. - ftyuv, on 07/28/2008, -0/+25If you look in the advanced settings, there's an option to let you do just that.
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