Why speed reading apps don't do any good

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Using your smartphone to learn to read faster? Replaced traditional techniques with popular applications? Forced to upset you - this decision was most likely wrong. And in this article, you will find out why.

Using your smartphone to learn to read faster? Replaced traditional techniques with popular applications? Forced to upset you - this decision was most likely wrong.

The results of recent experiments prove that even something as interesting as Spritz cannot make reading more effective. Why isn't this app actually working? Let's tell you now.

Reading "War and Peace" from a smartphone is perhaps not the best idea, but it is quite realizable. Users got this opportunity thanks to the Spritz application. It has made a lot of noise lately, especially with Samsung's announcement of pre-installing the app on the Galaxy S5.

The way Spritz works is simple: the application breaks the text into individual words and shows them to the reader one by one, focusing his attention in the middle of the word. In this way, the time spent on eye movement during normal reading is minimized. This technology is based on the so-called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) method. According to the developers, with its help Spritz speeds up the reading process without sacrificing comprehension. You get the ability to read at up to a thousand words per minute. At the same time, the screen size does not matter: the application is ideal even for small devices, such as smartwatches.

However, new research has shown that this idea is too good to be true. At least if you want to understand what you read. Indeed, is it worth trying to change fundamental cognitive processes for the sake of some gadgets?

Even if you were using Spritz just to read a tweet, you would not understand the message as clearly as if you slowly and thoughtfully read these 140 characters.

Elizabeth Schotter, a psychologist at the University of California, San Diego, recruited 40 student volunteers and conducted a small experiment. She observed whether the level of comprehension of the text would decrease if the eyes were prevented from involuntarily returning to certain passages - a process called regression. It takes about 10-15% of the reading time.

The results of the study were as follows. In normal reading, students' level of text comprehension remained the same, regardless of whether regression was recorded or not. This confirms that our eyes sometimes need to look at a fragment a second time to comprehend it. When the words quickly replaced each other and the participants in the experiment could not return to them, the understanding of the text deteriorated. This effect was observed when reading both very simple sentences and intricate phrases. “The results of our experiment clearly demonstrate that it is very important for readers to control their eye movements in order to understand what they read,” the author writes.

Spritz has become one of the most talked about attempts at using the RSVP method. It has been experimented with since 1970, but the use for speed reading has been talked about quite recently - due to the need for new methods of reading on small screens. Now on the Internet you can find another service with similar functionality to Spritz called Spreeder.

Lowell Eschen, a spokeswoman for the developer Spritz, claims that no one has yet been able to replicate how this app works exactly. After all, only Spritz highlights the optimal recognition point for each word. It becomes a kind of pointer for the eyes and helps the brain to decipher what it sees faster. The creators of Spritz touted this technology as a "new way of reading." According to them, the team worked on it for three years and can provide any evidence of their scientific developments.

Elizabeth Schotter, the author of the experiment described above, does not believe these marketing claims. “They claim to be doing science, but they haven't actually shown it yet,” says Schotter. - The creators of Spritz did not make any revolution. They may have only slightly improved the RSVP method, but it is still not effective enough."