Too many assumptions are made, and that's not necessarily expansive vocab or research. I know the basis of all of the arguements, and I'm in a basic high school psychology class.
For one "partial lobes" is misspelled it should be "parietal".
"it is unlikely that you train them to be as powerful as you like."
Power isn't defined, and theoretically, you don't have to train your mind to photoread, it should be a natural ability.
"Speeding reading sites, such as photoreader, maintain that the reason why their programs are able to teach individuals to read extremely fast is because they use an alternative technique that more heavily relies on individuals using their subconscious"
Preconscious and subconscious. The preconscious allows you to retrieve information more easily than the subconscious. For example, remembering what you had for lunch today would be preconscious, unless you were currently thinking about it, and then it would be conscious. Subconscious would be much harder to retrieve.
"It proposes that information from the senses is passed ‘in parallel’ to a short-term store."
This is assuming the information is being perceived in the conscious mind. When it's being perceived by the preconscious processor or subconscious, there isn't immediate analyzation, it's just perceived. Analyzation would occur only after activation, because it's brought to the conscious mind to be analyzed. You might also assume that if the information wasn't analyzed, it would make an affect on the subconscious mind direct. This is called direct learning, sound familiar? Unless your mind is conditioned to reject certain information, than it would pass through the conscious mind's radar. Some people think this could be a good or a bad thing.
"Firstly, you have the retinas receiving the sensory input and sending information to the thalamus, which in turn, sends the signals to the occipital lobe for analysis. The occipital lobe then sends the information to the temporal lobe, specifically the Wernicke language comprehension area, where it is then understood and then sent to the Broca area, which allows us to subvocalise the text that we are reading. In the process, of reading it also invokes many things like past memories, emotion, our current knowledge of the subject etc. These are functions that quite frankly, cannot be speeded up to suit ourselves."
There are many things within your peripheral vision that invoke memory and emotion, but you aren't always aware of it, does that make sense? Also, perceiving information subliminally, would skip the analyzation phase, as far as the conscious mind is concerned, anyway.
"Specifically, the information is sent to the unconscious at super rates and then we retrieve it. Wonderful. Now, if this was true then it would also be a revolution for things like hyponosis and other psychological therapies."
It's the preconscious processor, and the subconscious. And most of this paragraph,in the other parts, attempts to explain the reasoning and motives of developing photoreading. And it's definitely just an attempt.
"You cannot simple read at phenomenal rates and comprehend everything you are analysing"
It's not analyzed or comprehended at the moment you are photoreading it. That's done later on a conscious level during activation.
A placebo effect doesn't seem to explain this. 200 WPM is about average. How could a placebo effect cause a change from 200 WPM to 30,000 WPM? And actually it's 25,000 + which means up into the 100,000s usually, or higher. If that were true, I think what would be the most powerful placebo known to man. This also fails to explain the statistic of 90% success with photoreading.
This guy also goes on to brag about his current reading speed, and makes more assumptions.
This is just like any other idea presented in science. The idea is scrutinized, ridiculed, discreditted, and eventually accepted as common knowledge.
