I’ve been reading all wrong

I read a lot, and I’ve always found it hard to explain how I sort of skim the books, reading the whole thing, but at the same time not feeling like I am. People pay a lot of money to “learn how to speed read” and my answer is always, don’t let it stress you and start reading a sentence at a time. Well it looks like Scientists have come to exactly that conclusion.

The mystery of how we read a sentence has been unlocked by scientists.

Previously, researchers thought that, when reading, both eyes focused on the same letter of a word. But a UK team has found this is not always the case.

In fact, almost 50% of the time, each of our eyes locks on to different letters simultaneously.

At the BA Festival of Science in York, the researchers also revealed that our brain can fuse two separate images to obtain a clear view of a page.

Sophisticated eye-tracking equipment allowed the team to pinpoint which letter a volunteer’s eyes focused on, when reading 14-point font from one metre away.

Rather than the eyes moving smoothly over text, they make small jerky movements, focusing on a particular word for an instant and then moving along the sentence. Periods when the eyes are still are called fixations.

Crossed eyes

Professor Simon Liversedge, from the University of Southampton, said: “We found that in a very substantial number of fixations that people make when they read, they aren’t looking at the same letter.”

Instead, the eyes often focussed on different letters in the same word, about two characters apart, he said.

“They could be uncrossed, in the sense that the two lines of sight are not crossed when you look at a word, or alternatively the two lines of sight may be crossed,” he added.

The team’s results demonstrated that both eyes lock on to the same letter 53% of the time; for 39% of the time they see different letters with uncrossed eyes; and for 8% of the time the eyes are crossing to focus on different letters.

A follow-up experiment with the eye-tracking equipment showed that we only see one clear image when reading because our brain fuses the different images from our eyes together.

The tests
showed
that we
use the information
from both
eyes, rather than
our brain suppressing one
image and only processing the other.The tests showed that we use the information from both eyes, rather than our brain suppressing one image and only processing the other.

Professor Liversedge said: “A comprehensive understanding of the psychological processes underlying reading is vital if we are to develop better methods of teaching children to read and offer remedial treatments for those with reading disorders such as dyslexia.”

[BBC]

Now I’m not sure this changes a lot of things. It helps in trying to help people with Dyslexia. Which is good since even with my “speed reading” I do have a mild form of Disgraphia… Which means if you see teh instead of the or something that is readable… but something (about it*) bothers you. It bothers me too, and I try to fix it, but I can’t quite catch what the issue is either.

So here’s hoping they work it out, and if they do I have a beer for them.

* Sometimes I think I write words and they don’t make it into the article until I scan it later.

Tags: Interesting, Knowledge, Psychology, Reading, Science