Systematic research conducted in the 1970s investigating “rapid serial visual presentation” (RSVP) methods that present text one word at a time found that comprehension fell rapidly beyond rates of about 500 wpm, particularly for texts longer than single sentences. Removing readers’ control over which words they fixate and how long they look at them reduces comprehension. We also pause at clause and sentence boundaries to conduct “wrap up” processes that are important for effective comprehension. The time we fixate on words depends on their familiarity, predictability and length – the factors that determine the time required to identify and integrate their meanings. Most importantly, it ignores the time and cognitive effort required to integrate the words in a text for comprehension.Īlthough there is some truth to the claim that the relatively slow pace of eye movements reflects physical constraints on eye movements, it is primarily due to the cognitive demands of word identification and comprehension. A sequential reading strategy is also important for comprehension, particularly in English where the order of words is important for meaning.īut at a deeper level, Spritz ignores critical aspects of the scientific evidence about eye movements in reading. Skilled readers’ general strategy is, therefore, more similar to the sequential strategy forced by Spritz than the non-sequential scanning strategies advocated by many standard approaches to increasing reading speed. Even skilled readers fixate on most of the content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives) in a text, although they often skip over short function words (such as “to”, “in”, “on”, “the”) and highly predictable words. On the surface, Spritz is better aligned with scientific evidence about the skilled reading process than standard speed reading methods. In Spritz, it is an automatic outcome of “spritzing” because the average rate of speech is less than 200 wpm, so subvocalisation cannot be maintained at rates higher than that. In standard methods, eliminating subvocalisation is a major focus of training. These methods assume that sequential word-by-word reading is the major barrier to rapid reading and advocate a variety of methods designed to break this habit and adopt non-sequential scanning strategies, such as moving the eyes down the centre of the page, that are claimed to facilitate unconscious processing of relevant information in the text.ĭespite the very different ways in which they aim to achieve it, the methods do, though, have a common goal of reducing subvocalisation – saying the words in your head – during reading. Spritz takes almost the opposite approach to increasing reading speed as the “standard” approaches to speed reading spruiked in hundreds of YouTube clips. This is claimed to speed up reading by ensuring that the reader fixates at the optimal location to identify the word, while eliminating the time required for the reader to compute this location and move their eyes to it. Spritz’s major innovation is to centre the word in the redicle on the ORP and highlight it in red. I would love to see Amazon partner with Spritz-or just buy it outright-and incorporate the technology as an option when reading a Kindle book.Example of a Spritz ‘redicle’, and red highlight, seen here on Samsung Gear 2. Imagine how much more productive you’d be if you could get through all your email in a fifth of the time it normally takes you. I want to give my brain time to imagine the scene being described, and I want to use sub-vocalization to “hear” the different character voices in my head.įor other texts, however, Spritz would be helpful. When I read a Dan Brown novel, or The Hunger Games, I want to take in the nuance of the dialogue. I wouldn’t necessarily want to read fiction using Spritz. I have tried different traditional speed reading programs over the years with limited success. I am a more voracious reader than most-but not voracious enough to keep up with the pace at which I buy new books. By contrast, spritzing can be learned in less than 5 minutes and, if you don’t spritz for a month, no practice is needed to return quickly to your previous speed or skill-level.” While these methods can be effective, achieving significant improvement requires intensive, continuous training and dedication. The Spritz Web page explains what makes Spritz different from other speed reading systems: “There are lots of other reading techniques out there such as skimming (not reading every word), avoiding sub-vocalization (talking to yourself while reading) and enlarging the peripheral span (reading an entire page at a time by mental “snapshot”) that attempt to increase reading speeds.
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