Speed reading apps may kill comprehension

DigitalGov

A few months back, there was a lot of buzz about a new display technology that promised to greatly increase people's reading speeds. The approach, typified by Spritz, displays words one at a time in a single location. As the speed cranks up and words fly by, the service seems to live up to its promise: each word registers as it briefly flits across the screen.

But a new paper suggests that the approach has some severe limitations. Quite literally, there's no going back once you shoot past a word, and the result is a noticeable decrease in reading comprehension.

At war with saccades

The point of contention for everyone involved centers on small, rapid eye movements called saccades. Saccades occur naturally in vertebrates from us to fish, as they allow the eye to rapidly focus its attention. These eye movements are central to reading. As you read across a page of normally formatted text, your brain directs your eyes through a series of saccades that focus attention on each succeeding word.