Sure. The person who wrote it had an axe to grind.

However, there is useful information in the article to consider.

On the board on which the quoted post appeared a person said this:

"There are actually quite a few experiments looking directly at how well something can be understood and retained when it is picked up unconsciously. As it turns out, the unconscious isn't very smart in this respect."

Is this true?

My own experiences with photoreading have been rather haphazard. Sometimes it really helps, sometimes it really doesn't.

And using semantics as is done in these arguments really doesn't serve to provide much useful information. Many labels are misleading. Take "photoreading" itself, for instance. It has nothing to do with photographic memory and the photoreading part of the process has nothing to do with reading as we know it. So you say "photoread at over 30,000 words per minute!" to an audience that is not privvy to the actual definition of the term? What are they going to think? Certainly something along the lines of, "Well, they mean presenting information to my preconscious processor to have it later triggered and brought into conscious awareness through a learned process," right? No. They are going to think that they will have conscious access to information that is part of a photographic memory somehow derived through the process. It's misleading.

Also, IMO differentiating the subconscious from the preconscious in this argument is pretty useless. The terms "subconscious" and "unconscious" are very broad and very messy, and many people will use them interchangeably with "preconscious." Arguing that "preconscious" information is not "unconscious" to me seems little more than semantic and does not serve to present any useful distinctions. To me, the preconscious is a subset of the unconscious, but then again I am not incredibly acquainted with the accepted use of these terms in certain circles.

I understand that someone studying something should learn all about it they can and become familiar with its nomenclature.

The argument presented, however, raises an interesting question: based on what we know about the brain, can the parts involved in processing visual information and the parts involved in comprehending written material communicate in a way that supports the claims made by LSC regarding photoreading?

In photoreading two primary skills seem to be involved: 1) delivering information to the unconscious (yes, I am using that term) with the greatest bandwidth and accuracy, and 2) developing the conscious/unconscious interface so that information in the unconscious can be brought into conscious understanding and properly contextualized.

The whole hype about photoreading, which is encouraged by LSC's ad copy BTW, brings focus away from what it actually is and toward misconceptions about it.

[This message has been edited by babayada (edited January 14, 2005).]