To my knowledge I am not dyslexic. If I correctly understand what subvocalizing is (reading via your inner monologue), I do it by default unless I explicitly turn it off. I don’t remember how I learned to turn it off, but I remember it was a specific skill I had to learn. And I usually don’t turn it off because reading without subvocalizing 1. Takes effort, 2. It’s less enjoyable, and 3. Makes it harder for me to understand and retain what I’m reading. I generally only turn it off when I have a specific reason why I have to read quickly, e.g. for a school assignment or reading group that I’ve run low on time to do.
As I understand it from some cog psych/ linguistics class (it’s not my area but this makes sense WRT brain function), the problem with subvocalizing is that it limits your reading speed to approximately the rate you can talk. So most skilled readers have learned to disconnect from subvocalizing. Part of the training for speedreading is to make sure you’re not subvocalizing at all, and this helped me learn to speedread.
I turn on subvocalizing sometimes when reading poetry or lyrical prose, or sometimes when I’m reading slowly to make damned sure I understand something, or remember its precise phrasing.
How does someone train themself out of subvocalising?
If you think critically, has speed reading actually increased your learning rate for semantic knowledge?
Most things have downsides, what are the downsides of speed reading?
What are your Words Per Minute (WPM)?
Did you test WPM before learning speed reading?
If this was an RPG, what level do you think you are in speed reading from 1-100?
How long did it take you to reach your current level in this skill?
Sorry that’s a lot of questions. I’ve been curious about this topic for a while. But the sources I hear it recommended from aren’t ones I completely trust. So it feels like a good opportunity getting to ask a LWer about it.
Quick summary: it’s super easy and useful to learn a little speedreading. Just move your finger a bit faster than your eyes are comfortable moving and force yourself to keep up as best you can. Just a little of this can go a long way when combined with a skimming-for-important-bits mindset with nonfiction and academic articles.
Explicit answers:
With Regard To brain function. It’s vague, just this matches my understanding of how the brain works.
I don’t remember. I think it was just a matter of forcing yourself to go faster than you could subvocalize. And to try to notice when you were subvocalizing or not. The core technique in learning speed reading was to move your finger along the lines, and keep going slightly faster. I learned this from the very old book How to Read a Book.
I’m pretty sure it both a) literally hasn’t and more importantly b) effectively has increased my learning rate for semantic knowledge. Fundamentally it doesn’t. It doesn’t allow you to think faster (or at least not much), so if you’re reading complex stuff quickly, you’re just not going to understand or remember it. BUT it allows you to quickly skim to find the semantic knowledge you find worth learning and remembering. So your effect rate is higher. Learning to skim is absolutely crucial for academia, and speedreading is very useful for skimming quickly. You sort of get a vague idea of what you’re reading, and then spend time on the stuff that might be important.
That mentioned some of the downsides. It’s what you were guessing: you can’t really take things in faster, so it’s a quantity/quality tradeoff. Here’s another manifestation. I rarely bother to speedread fiction, because I can’t imagine the setting and action if I do. Come to think of it, maybe I could a bit better if I practiced it more. But I usually just skip ahead or better yet, put the book down if I’m tempted to skim. There are lots of great books to read for pleasure, and if it’s not fun word by word and worth imagining, I don’t really see the point. But a friend of mine speedreads tons of fiction, so there is a point; he says he also can’t imagine it in detail, but I guess he’s enjoying taking in the story in broader strokes.
I have no idea what my WPM was or is. It’s abundantly clear that I learned to read far faster.
Probably like level 20? Depends if it’s a nonlinear curve.
Here’s the interesting bit: it was very, very easy to learn some useful speedreading, just by using my finger to force my eyes to move faster on the page (and maybe some lesser techniques I’ve now forgotten). I think I probably spent 20 minutes to an hour doing that explictly, then was able to push my reading speed as high as I want. I think with more practice, I could probably take things in and imagine scenes a little better at high speed, but it seemed like diminishing returns, and I’m not the type to just sit and practice skills. To be fair, I spent my childhood reading instead of doing former schooling, so I might’ve had a deeper skill base to work from.
I’m now going to admit your question made me realize I’m not sure “subvocalize” refers to the same thing for everyone … I could always read in my head, but the error rate was huge. Only in my early 20s did I switch to a way of reading in my head that also does cadence and voices etc. The latter is what I mean by subvocalizing: The entire richness of an audiobook, generated by my own voice, but just so softly no one else can hear. It’s a gradient from normal speech volume, to whisper, to whispering so softly no one can hear, to moving my lips and no sound coming out, to entire subvocalization.
Anyway, my prediction is that non-dyslectics do not subvocalize—it’s much too slow. You can’t read faster than you speak in that case.
Anyway, my prediction is that non-dyslectics do not subvocalize—it’s much too slow. You can’t read faster than you speak in that case.
Maybe I’m just weird, but I totally do sometimes subvocalize, but incredibly quickly. Almost clipped or overlapping to an extent, in a way that can only really work inside your head? And that way it can go faster than you can physically speak. Why should your mental voice be limited by the limits of physical lips, tongue, and glottis, anyway?
Yeah, I myself subvocalize absolutely everything and I am still horrified when I sometimes try any “fast” reading techniques—those drain all of the enjoyment our of reading for me, as if instead of characters in a story I would imagine them as p-zombies.
For non-fiction, visual-only reading cuts connections to my previous knowledge (as if the text was a wave function entangled to the rest of the universe and by observing every sentence in isolation, I would collapse it to just “one sentence” without further meaning).
I never move my lips or tongue though, I just do the voices (obviously, not just my voice … imagine reading Dennett without Dennett’s delivery, isn’t that half of the experience gone? how do other people enjoy reading with most of the beauty missing?).
It’s faster then physical speech for me too, usually the same speed as verbal thinking.
Yeah, I myself subvocalize absolutely everything and I am still horrified when I sometimes try any “fast” reading techniques—those drain all of the enjoyment our of reading for me, as if instead of characters in a story I would imagine them as p-zombies.
I speed-read fiction, too. When I do, though, I’ll stop for a bit whenever something or someone new is being described, to give myself a moment to picture it in a way that my mind can bring up again as set dressing.
That sounds great! I have to admit that I still get a far richer experience from reading out loud than subvocalizing, and my subvocalizing can’t go faster than my speech. So it sounds like you have an upgraded form with more speed and richness, which is great!
Oh, I should probably mention that my weakness is that I cannot remember the stuff well while reading out loud (especially when I focus on pronunciation for the benefit of listeners)… My workaround is to make pauses—it seems the stuff is in working memory and my subconscious can process it if I give it a short moment, and then I can think about it consciously too, but if I would read out loud a whole page, I would have trouble even trying to summarize the content.
Similarly a common trick how to remember names is to repeat the name out loud.. that doesn’t seem to improve recall for me very much, I can hear someone’s name a lot of times and repeating it to myself doesn’t seem to help. Perhaps seeing it written while hearing it might be better, but not sure… By far the best method is when I want to write them a message and I have to scroll around until I see their picture, after that I seem to remember names just fine 😹
I was just reading about this, and apparently subvocalizing refers to small but physically detectable movement of the vocal cords. I don’t know whether / how often I do this (I am not at all aware of it). But it is literally impossible for me to read (or write) without hearing the words in my inner ear, and I’m not dyslexic (my spelling is quite good and almost none of what’s described in OP sounds familiar, so I doubt it’s that I’m just undiagnosed). I thought this was more common than not, so I’m kind of shocked that the reacts on this comment’s grandparent indicate only about 1⁄3 (of respondents to the “poll”) subvocalize. The voice I hear is quite featureless, and I can read maybe 300 words per minute, which I think is actually faster than average, though needing to “hear” the words does impose an upper bound on reading speed.
Is it not normal to sub vocalise?
Could people react to this comment with a Tick if they do, and a cross if they don’t?
To my knowledge I am not dyslexic. If I correctly understand what subvocalizing is (reading via your inner monologue), I do it by default unless I explicitly turn it off. I don’t remember how I learned to turn it off, but I remember it was a specific skill I had to learn. And I usually don’t turn it off because reading without subvocalizing 1. Takes effort, 2. It’s less enjoyable, and 3. Makes it harder for me to understand and retain what I’m reading. I generally only turn it off when I have a specific reason why I have to read quickly, e.g. for a school assignment or reading group that I’ve run low on time to do.
As I understand it from some cog psych/ linguistics class (it’s not my area but this makes sense WRT brain function), the problem with subvocalizing is that it limits your reading speed to approximately the rate you can talk. So most skilled readers have learned to disconnect from subvocalizing. Part of the training for speedreading is to make sure you’re not subvocalizing at all, and this helped me learn to speedread.
I turn on subvocalizing sometimes when reading poetry or lyrical prose, or sometimes when I’m reading slowly to make damned sure I understand something, or remember its precise phrasing.
I’ve got a few questions.
What is “WRT brain function”?
How does someone train themself out of subvocalising?
If you think critically, has speed reading actually increased your learning rate for semantic knowledge?
Most things have downsides, what are the downsides of speed reading?
What are your Words Per Minute (WPM)?
Did you test WPM before learning speed reading?
If this was an RPG, what level do you think you are in speed reading from 1-100?
How long did it take you to reach your current level in this skill?
Sorry that’s a lot of questions. I’ve been curious about this topic for a while. But the sources I hear it recommended from aren’t ones I completely trust. So it feels like a good opportunity getting to ask a LWer about it.
Quick summary: it’s super easy and useful to learn a little speedreading. Just move your finger a bit faster than your eyes are comfortable moving and force yourself to keep up as best you can. Just a little of this can go a long way when combined with a skimming-for-important-bits mindset with nonfiction and academic articles.
Explicit answers:
With Regard To brain function. It’s vague, just this matches my understanding of how the brain works.
I don’t remember. I think it was just a matter of forcing yourself to go faster than you could subvocalize. And to try to notice when you were subvocalizing or not. The core technique in learning speed reading was to move your finger along the lines, and keep going slightly faster. I learned this from the very old book How to Read a Book.
I’m pretty sure it both a) literally hasn’t and more importantly b) effectively has increased my learning rate for semantic knowledge. Fundamentally it doesn’t. It doesn’t allow you to think faster (or at least not much), so if you’re reading complex stuff quickly, you’re just not going to understand or remember it. BUT it allows you to quickly skim to find the semantic knowledge you find worth learning and remembering. So your effect rate is higher. Learning to skim is absolutely crucial for academia, and speedreading is very useful for skimming quickly. You sort of get a vague idea of what you’re reading, and then spend time on the stuff that might be important.
That mentioned some of the downsides. It’s what you were guessing: you can’t really take things in faster, so it’s a quantity/quality tradeoff. Here’s another manifestation. I rarely bother to speedread fiction, because I can’t imagine the setting and action if I do. Come to think of it, maybe I could a bit better if I practiced it more. But I usually just skip ahead or better yet, put the book down if I’m tempted to skim. There are lots of great books to read for pleasure, and if it’s not fun word by word and worth imagining, I don’t really see the point. But a friend of mine speedreads tons of fiction, so there is a point; he says he also can’t imagine it in detail, but I guess he’s enjoying taking in the story in broader strokes.
I have no idea what my WPM was or is. It’s abundantly clear that I learned to read far faster.
Probably like level 20? Depends if it’s a nonlinear curve.
Here’s the interesting bit: it was very, very easy to learn some useful speedreading, just by using my finger to force my eyes to move faster on the page (and maybe some lesser techniques I’ve now forgotten). I think I probably spent 20 minutes to an hour doing that explictly, then was able to push my reading speed as high as I want. I think with more practice, I could probably take things in and imagine scenes a little better at high speed, but it seemed like diminishing returns, and I’m not the type to just sit and practice skills. To be fair, I spent my childhood reading instead of doing former schooling, so I might’ve had a deeper skill base to work from.
Yeah, that’s my understanding as well.
I’m now going to admit your question made me realize I’m not sure “subvocalize” refers to the same thing for everyone … I could always read in my head, but the error rate was huge. Only in my early 20s did I switch to a way of reading in my head that also does cadence and voices etc. The latter is what I mean by subvocalizing: The entire richness of an audiobook, generated by my own voice, but just so softly no one else can hear. It’s a gradient from normal speech volume, to whisper, to whispering so softly no one can hear, to moving my lips and no sound coming out, to entire subvocalization.
Anyway, my prediction is that non-dyslectics do not subvocalize—it’s much too slow. You can’t read faster than you speak in that case.
Maybe I’m just weird, but I totally do sometimes subvocalize, but incredibly quickly. Almost clipped or overlapping to an extent, in a way that can only really work inside your head? And that way it can go faster than you can physically speak. Why should your mental voice be limited by the limits of physical lips, tongue, and glottis, anyway?
Yeah, I myself subvocalize absolutely everything and I am still horrified when I sometimes try any “fast” reading techniques—those drain all of the enjoyment our of reading for me, as if instead of characters in a story I would imagine them as p-zombies.
For non-fiction, visual-only reading cuts connections to my previous knowledge (as if the text was a wave function entangled to the rest of the universe and by observing every sentence in isolation, I would collapse it to just “one sentence” without further meaning).
I never move my lips or tongue though, I just do the voices (obviously, not just my voice … imagine reading Dennett without Dennett’s delivery, isn’t that half of the experience gone? how do other people enjoy reading with most of the beauty missing?).
It’s faster then physical speech for me too, usually the same speed as verbal thinking.
I speed-read fiction, too. When I do, though, I’ll stop for a bit whenever something or someone new is being described, to give myself a moment to picture it in a way that my mind can bring up again as set dressing.
That sounds great! I have to admit that I still get a far richer experience from reading out loud than subvocalizing, and my subvocalizing can’t go faster than my speech. So it sounds like you have an upgraded form with more speed and richness, which is great!
Oh, I should probably mention that my weakness is that I cannot remember the stuff well while reading out loud (especially when I focus on pronunciation for the benefit of listeners)… My workaround is to make pauses—it seems the stuff is in working memory and my subconscious can process it if I give it a short moment, and then I can think about it consciously too, but if I would read out loud a whole page, I would have trouble even trying to summarize the content.
Similarly a common trick how to remember names is to repeat the name out loud.. that doesn’t seem to improve recall for me very much, I can hear someone’s name a lot of times and repeating it to myself doesn’t seem to help. Perhaps seeing it written while hearing it might be better, but not sure… By far the best method is when I want to write them a message and I have to scroll around until I see their picture, after that I seem to remember names just fine 😹
Oh interesting! Maybe I’m wrong. I’m more curious about something like a survey on the topic now.
I was just reading about this, and apparently subvocalizing refers to small but physically detectable movement of the vocal cords. I don’t know whether / how often I do this (I am not at all aware of it). But it is literally impossible for me to read (or write) without hearing the words in my inner ear, and I’m not dyslexic (my spelling is quite good and almost none of what’s described in OP sounds familiar, so I doubt it’s that I’m just undiagnosed). I thought this was more common than not, so I’m kind of shocked that the reacts on this comment’s grandparent indicate only about 1⁄3 (of respondents to the “poll”) subvocalize. The voice I hear is quite featureless, and I can read maybe 300 words per minute, which I think is actually faster than average, though needing to “hear” the words does impose an upper bound on reading speed.