Questions tagged [reading]
For questions about the psychological or neuroscientific basis of learning to read, reading comprehension in children or adults, or deficits/disorders of reading ability.
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Is it possible to read faster by converting text into shorthand form or symbolic or logoraphic notation?
People often use speed-writing and stenography to write or type faster, and more words written in a logographic language such as Chinese or Japanese can fit into a standard tweet on Twitter than in a ...
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Choosing Standardized Reading Comprehension Tests to Generalize Results on Active Reading Techniques
We have been designing a series of experiments on comparing different active reading techniques for college students. In most of the studies we found in the literature, the passages are arbitrarily ...
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Research about effects of text formatting on cognitive load when reading?
Note: I've posted a version of this question on ux.stackexchange.com and have been advised to also try here.
Has anyone come across peer-reviewed research on the effect of text formatting on cognitive ...
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Is restlessness while studying a psychological phenomenon to address?
I observe the phenomenon of restlessness in some students only while studying textbooks. The restlessness starts after few minutes when they start to read and understand from textbooks. They can do ...
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Analysis of reading times data based on residual reading times or rather log-transformed reading times
After reading the article by Enochson and Culbertson (2015), I found out that reaction times elicited via self-paced reading tasks should be analyzed based on the residual reading times if the ...
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Is cumulative self-paced reading a reliable measure in online experiments?
I am a Master's student in psycholinguistics and I am currently writing my thesis to explore the effects of the social context on language comprehension during reading. While I am aware that the ...
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Is there a reading comprehension theory that suggests simple reading questions are best solved via simple text analysis, and vice versa?
My main field is not Linguistics/reading comprehension so what I am asking might sound a bit silly or not make a lot of sense. My question could certainly be better-phrased.
Is there a theory in ...
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Does reading sentences one by one contributes to better comprehension of the text?
Does reading sentences one by one beside a picture
(as shown in this video of this project) contributes to better comprehension of the text,
due to better readability, focus and other factors? In ...
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What's it called when you read a book with a particular focus and that focus is what you see and remember but other topics you forget?
I sometimes read with a particular focus or goal and don"t remember the things outside of my focus/goal even though I've read them. What is this phenomena called?
For example, you can read a ...
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Linguistic & cross-cultural perceptions of typography
I have moved this question over from ux.stackexchange in the hope that it is a better fit for this forum and will get a few answers
There is a great deal of information that one can find on the web ...
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Improving reading speed for complex material for already high comprehenders by eliminating mental vocalization? [duplicate]
I'm a heavy reader, but my reading is limited primarily to non-fiction and scientific material. I find that my speed is becoming a real hinderance and is starting to discourage consumption. ...
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Which is easier for human perception: type of variable before or after its name?
In some programming languages type of variable goes before it's name.
In another - name goes first and then type.
For example if I declare string:
...
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Does white noise impair studying, reading, recall/memory or learning?
I recently have been trying to look into whether or not white noise works as a means to block out external sounds so I can concentrate. However, I want to know whether it actually impairs studying and ...
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Omitting word(s) when typing
[Reraising a recently asked question that was closed here, but in more cogsci fashion, I hope.]
Some people are more inclined than others to omit a word when typing, but still be unaware of its ...
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Why does paraphrasing result in failure to obtain the spacing effect?
Dempster, F. N. (1988). The spacing effect: A case study in the failure to apply the results of psychological research. American Psychologist, 43(8), 627 explains that:
One implication of this ...
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Is there a limit on the rate at which incoming information can be comprehended?
I recently started a course on "Speed Reading", which aim is to read faster whilst holding the level of comprehension constant (so not to its detriment, but not aimed at improving comprehension either)...
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What makes a book easier or harder to read?
I am interested in books by academics that examine the following. How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading is the only relevant one that I found.
Suppose a reader to be deciding ...
user6479
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Why I read by hearing the words?
This question requires very little background:
1. English is my second language and I find myself thinking mostly in it
2. I tend to listen more than to read it
When I read a book from the computer ...
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What is the optimal contrast ratio for best readability?
I have asked the same question half a year ago on Graphic Design but received no useful answer.
According to the W3C (and another question on this site), the contrast ratio between body text and text ...
user3116
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Why can't we understand text without subvocalizating it?
I wonder why can't we understand text the same way we understand pictures?
Everything we see but text we understand without the inner voice, we don't subvocalize/describe a forest, a street or ...
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Why do we need to break down long sentences to understand them?
Why do we need to break down long sentences that won't immediately scan? Is it an attention thing? Working memory, executive function?
For example:
Studies show that if there are many stimuli ...
user7852
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Does reading a word without mentally vocalizing it inhibit your ability to comprehend? [duplicate]
In speed reading, people are taught to read much faster by avoiding the common habit of mentally vocalizing the words in our heads.
Is mental vocalization an unnecessary habit that can be scraped ...
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Why does the brain skip over repeated "the" words in sentences?
For example, in this sentence by the the time you are done reading you will have already skipped over the double "the".
I have searched this on the internet a little, but I have found nothing that ...
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Can reading a non-fiction book with great curiosity account to taking a break?
In our day to day life, especially at work(in Office say a software company), due to the nature of work, it requires a lot of attention and deep involvement in the system/code. It is popular belief ...
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Why is it easier to see black text on a white background?
I'm wondering why it's easier to see black text on a white background than it is to see white text on a black background. I say that it's harder based on life experience (Hate webpages with black ...
user11086
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How is it called when we explicitly quantify a letter or digit instead of spelling it out multiple times?
When we need to repeat a letter or digit several times (for example when spelling out a number or an acronym) it is easier to explicitly quantify it instead of spelling it out repeatedly: for example ...
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The NART as a measure of premorbid IQ in serious mental illness
How reliable is National Adult Reading Test in estimating premorbid IQ in schizophrenia?
Is it compromised if the difference between current IQ and the NART is a standard deviation or more?
user7852
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What skills or mental proceses improve understanding of longer written sentences? [closed]
This question concerns only written sentences, and presumes that longer sentences are more difficult to understand, a presumption which consists with the formula behind the Flesch–Kincaid readability ...
user6479
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Is it easier/faster to recognise digits or written words?
Is there any peer-reviewed evidence which suggests whether it is faster and/or easier for a native English speaker to recognise digits (1, 2, 3, 4) vs. full written English word equivalents (one, two, ...
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Do the deaf read faster?
Assuming that a person is born deaf and has never heard spoken language, as they learn to read, do they on average read faster than people with healthy hearing who learn to read the usual way?
The ...
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What does the death of a fictional character mean?
Aristotle approached the question of story and meaning in this way: Why is it, he asked, when we see a dead body in the street we have one reaction, but when we read of death in Homer, or see it in ...
user3116
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Does being read to improve reading speed?
So my girlfriend is not what you would call a fast reader. She understands completely what she reads, but she reads rather slowly. I'm trying to be a good boyfriend and help her out with this, but the ...
Cyberson
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Reading words without pronunciation
I have been trying to practice speed reading, and found the removal of subvocalization technique, but it seems almost impossible to understand words without pronouncing them in my head.
I think our ...
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What did Jung's patient find out?
I'm reading Dreams by Carl Jung, and I couldn't understand a specific paragraph. Maybe I'm missing something so obvious that he didn't bother to write. It is the entry numbered 542:
What did the ...
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Writing system, its future and social importance [closed]
I work on a rather specific subject, namely developement and inventing of writing systems (simply - alphabets). For some years it was just a hobby and creative exercise, but with time this hobby ...
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Is there a name for reading things how you meant to write them?
I'm sure many of us have this experience:
When I'm proofreading my own writing I will pass over it multiple times, but miss mistakes since I read what I intended to write (what's "in my head") and ...
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Where in the brain is meaning extracted from visual information?
I am looking into several systems for improving learning speeds and ran into a question I seem unable to answer on my own:
When we read a word, it somehow gets converted into it's abstract meaning.
...
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How does the brain know whether or not it comprehends a novel concept?
There seem to be at least two kinds of confusion regarding novel concepts.
In one, the brain simply can't form an abstract model from whatever information is being presented. It's where you can't "...
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Reading vs. watching a lecture: which activity results in higher knowledge retention?
I teach calculus to freshmen and currently spend most of the classroom time lecturing. To make classes more interactive I'd like to shift this phase of "knowledge transfer" outside of classes. Either ...
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Does the time required to read a word grow linearly with the number of characters?
I recently installed a speed reader on my tablet. Now I wonder how the minimal time needed to read an $N$-letter word grows.
There was this previous question on the relationship between sentence ...
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How does syntax highlighting affect the learning of a new programming language?
What impact does syntax highlighting have on students' progress in learning a new programming language?
I'm looking for studies along the lines of the following hypothetical experiment, which ...
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At what age do children typically reach adult reading speed?
A kid who just started to read puts a lot of effort in processing sentences. These efforts will decrease as he/she gets older and, at some point (around 12, 15?), will read as fast as an adult.
Is ...
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Why don't people read instructions?
Some people are very careless when reading instruction on a work task they've been given or in reading any other kind of text. They would skip some of the sentences, not get deep into other and ...
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Is reading from the screen more difficult than reading from paper and how can screen reading be made easier?
I've noticed that as a student when reading material, there is a choice between reading from the screen or reading from paper.
When reading from paper I find that I concentrate more and that ...
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As for future mind control/reading technology, can humans fight it?
As of recent times, rats have communicated through wireless brain implants, from across the globe. Also, recent fMRI technologies have allowed prediction of movements (or intention), and the ...
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What psychological factors account for code readability?
Readability is often intuitively synthesized. If you see some piece of code, you just know whether it is readable or not. But what are actual psychological, scientific explanations for this?
There ...
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Training for the corpus callosum?
Since reading is done in the left hemisphere of the brain, does reading text in the left visual field train the corpus callosum? For instance, I am interested in knowing whether training may lead to ...
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Dyslexia and IQ
Background Information of my questions:
At the age of eight I was "diagnosed" with Dyslexia, I am now 47. I went from not being able to read and barely able to write to a college reading level in 9 ...
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In what ways can someone increase their brain function while reading [closed]
On Facebook, someone posed the following question:
In what ways can someone increase brain function while reading? I like to read but have problems retaining information. Sometimes I get a ...
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What is the scientific support for Einstein's claim about the negative effects of reading too much?
Einstein once said:
Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its
creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain
too little falls into lazy habits of ...
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