Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer Text from article about Photoreading. Really appreciate responses.

It's an Swedish article, but I'll try to translate it into English as accurate as I am able to.

"Learnings Strategies Cooperation, is saying that if you are taking their course, you will easily reach 25.000 WPM, about 100x the normal reading speed, with a better understunding and a sharper concentration.

The speed-reading courses (it's an article about speed-reading techniques. That's why they are counting in PR as one) are often claiming that the eye is only a pair of binoculars or a camera. In fact, the eye is a round-shaped fluidfilled body that absorbs light through the pupil, turns it upside-down and projects the image on the backside of the eye. The retina is not a photographical movie, nor and okular(correct word?) in a binocular.

A photographic movie - or the part a CCD in a digitalcamera - is filming with the same strenth in every part of the image. The retina doesn't do that. The images that are absorbed by the retina are only sharp on a specific spot - and it's on the Yellow Spot (that's what it's called in Swedish. I think it's the same in english), which absorbs light from about 1.5 degrees from the field of vision. The light that falls on your yellow spot corresponds to what you are experiencing you are looking on.

The yellow spot is filled with pegs - cells which are sensitive to light and helps you to see fine structures like letters. The thumbnail is a good estimation of the size of the yellow spots size. Inside the area of the "thumbnail" we can se sharp, so sharp that we can recognize words and read. Outside of the yellow spot the sharpness is decreaing very much.

Photographic reading is physically impossible because the eye doesn't work like a camera. It's been known atleast since 1935 when Östberg mapped the pegs and sticks over the retina. You simply can't look in the middle of the page and see what's written on the sides of the page."

This was translated quite quickly from swedish and my english is not very good. I would really appreciate responses about this text (it's just a part of an article, but this is the only section which focuses on Photoreading).

Thank you // Viggo

It sounds to me like they evaluated the system without trying it themselves.

Your eye doesn't need to be focused on the words to Photoread. The point of Photofocus (Alex, correct me if I'm wrong) is to set your gaze so that the right brain can load the information subconsciously. The Activation techniques then bring that information out to the left brain where you have conscious access to it.

[This message has been edited by scribe (edited March 11, 2005).]

Scribe,

Isnt the key issue here that the article is saying that once the text moves out of the focused area, the text is completely unreadable, even by the conscious mind, let alone unconscious? Thats how I am reading the article, though I have had to infer some stuff.

k.

The article is correct you cannot read that 25,000wpm using focal vision.

For PhotoReading we PhotoRead at 25,000wpm or more.

You cannot compare reading with PhotoReading because PhotoReading does not use focal vision it uses your peripheral vision which does the preconsious processing. If you ever noticed anything out of the corners of your eye and suddenly took defensive action it is because your preconscious processor saw it and made you consciously aware of it.

PhotoReading uses the peripheral vison to bypass the conscious mind and allow the preconscious processor to handle the information. That's why it's important not to be reading the words on the page while you are PhotoReading. It means you're trying to read with focal vision and it turns off the peripheral vison for this task.

Alex