Reading off a computer screen

Someone asked me a terrific question today.

There is a theory that we do not absorb as well when we read from a screen as we do when reading from a book. Thought you would have some input re this.

And here is my reply.

Absolutely true we don’t absorb as well when we read from a computer screen.. Not really a theory either Jacob Nielsen has been testing it since the mid 1990. He originally found that we read 25% slower and in 2005 readability improved by 5%. Most readers only skim and marketers can take advantage of reading hot spots. That is where people actually read. If you want to know more about this I suggest you check out the useit website.

I’ve noticed that it has a significant impact on print reading too. When I first got seriously involved with reading in 2002 the statistics floating around was an average speed of 230 words a minute. Now I keep coming across papers that say the average speed is 190 word per minute average. These statistics have been reported for England, USA, Canada and in my class I find that most people read 1.25 pages in three minutes which is consistent with 190 words a minute.

I believe this drop in reading speed is caused by the fact that we spend so much time computer reading. The poor comprehension of what we read from a monitor carries over to paper reading.

The reason why comprehension is so poor is skimming is not reading and is not effective in picking up all the important information. This is where most people find speed reading systems let them down. As speed reading is an attempt to push the eyeballs faster across a page it still works with the primary working memory as one would with elementary reading.

So one is handicapped by the conscious minds limited ability to handle more than 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information a second. You need to be able to cluster ideas to use that limited capacity.

The second problem with skimming and speed reading because you are working with the primary working memory, is you don’t have enough time to put the information into long term memory. In my view at best it lands in mid term memory. Some believe it is only in the short term memory yet to me it does last a bit longer than that. It never satisfied me because it seemed inaccurate because I believed speed readers must get a bit more out of it than that otherwise it wouldn’t make sense to speed read at all. A mid term memory has recently been identified and that is about 24 hours after that the mind dumps the information as unimportant. To my understanding this is more the speed readers experience.

The lament I hear is just about everything gained from speed reading is quickly forgotten. All speed readers I have spoken with have told me that they often have to re-read what they had previously speed read because they forgot the information. The problem is it happens again when they speed read it again.

We did hope that the faster computers would eliminate the eye fatigue that come from looking at a computer screen However this has not yet been the case. That’s why many people prefer to print out what they read and why we should take comments on a forum, email, chatrooms, forum and the like with a grain of salt. In the effort to read from the monitor the person my simply have skimmed over a message and missed a significant point and misunderstood the communication.

Coming onto the market are e-book readers These will be a significant reduction in paper waste once they gain acceptance. The screen is more like printed paper and since the screen doesn’t have to constantly refresh it is a lot easier on the eyes. I recently bought one and found I was able to read 3 books in the hour and I find it difficult to read that many on a computer.

One of the main problems with skimming is the comprehension suffers and as that is what speed reading is, skimming, we often miss significant cues and miss the meaning of the text we read. This also causes confusion and costs in other ways. Anything faster than 800 wpm is skimming and not reading and no one who teaches reading will advertise that they can teach you to read at 1000 to 25,000 words a minute because you cannot read faster than 800 words a minute.

With PhotoReading we teach people to PhotoRead at 25,000 words a minute (it’s actually a lot faster on computer screen). PhotoReading is not reading. PhotoReading is different to speed reading because we aim to absorb all the information by placing the information into the long term memory first. Through activation we gain the conscious comprehension in 1/3rd the time of traditional reading.

PhotoReading is a system. A system that uses the whole mind for reading. The system allows a beginner to get their reading done in 1/3 the time. Experienced PhotoReaders manage it in 1/5th or even 1/10th the time.

If you’re in Australia and would like to learn PhotoReading see my schedule.

© Alex Viefhaus July 2008