Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer Very Interesting

Hmm,

2 things, in the book Paul claims that the 'thinking cap' relates to the Tangerine effect.

No where in google can I find a reference to this, IE it's made up, there is no such thing as a tangerine effect.

Please can someone point out anywhere where it's mentioned that the term is related to anything about focusing on the back/top of your head.

Also I found this very interesting post by John Grinder, the 'father' of NLP, the same person that Paul mentions in the book. And has a signature from in the foreword.

Unfortunately John Grinder denies that he was asked to do this, and seems very surprised as he's had nothing to do with Photreading, please make up your own mind
http://forum1.nlpwhisperinginthewind.com/ShowMessage.asp?ID=8557

Any studies NOT written by Paul about how photoreading works?

Any reason why the book has not been updated substantially since it was published, or why Paul doesn't post in this forum, or indeed why we only appear to have a single moderator?

My main concern with the book is that one of the foundations/basis it cites for the concept of 'other than concious processing' is the famous "Vicary" experiment in Ft. Lee, NJ.

This was the 1957 claim by James Vicary that he increased sales in a movie theater by flashing "Eat Popcorn" and "Drink Coke" on the screen. The Vicary experiment has been clearly debunked as a hoax. And yet the PR book prominently cites this experiment.

I think if the book and course are revised in the future, this reference should be removed.

[This message has been edited by Publius (edited May 04, 2006).]

Paul learned about the tangerine technique from someone, but I forgot who specifically. Perhaps the moderator knows. If I can find the info, I'll let you know.

With regards to John Grinder, I don't think it really matters whether his comments add or detract from the photoreading process. There are plenty of other positive reviews by names like Tony Robbins, Paul Mckenna, Eric Jensen, Sheila Ostrander and several other accelerated learning authors. But it is strange how his review was placed on there even though he didn't write it.

The book is now it it's 3rd edition so it has been updated, and last I heard, it's in the process of being updated.

I know there is a study done by a representative from NASA who claimed it's not that much better than regular reading

As for the last question, I suppose Paul and Pete are busy with other things.

The question is WHY did Paul sign/put John's name to the book...without asking him??

I think it's pretty obvious that this was done to bolster evidence that NLP was used as the basis for PR.

This NASA study ain't going to happen, it's trotted out each year whenever someone asks about studies, I was actually waiting for someone to allude to it, and on cue.....

The Vicary reference is hilarious.

Is there any prood, apart from anecdotal, or some truly dodgy radio show/ black and white TV program showing how Paul is photoreading.

It's really about as believable as offering proof of teleportation by showing an illusionist walking through the great wall of China, ONE demonstration is all there seems to be of PR's powers.

C'mon you have to admit this house of cards falls down at the slightest breeze of serious investigation.

Given the massive amounts of questions about every process by people who OWN the latest revision of the book which are posted here, I would have thought it may have covered these areas more, rather than just incrementing the revision number without any important updates.

From literally reading every single post on here, over the years from the archive, I've yet to see any proof that PR works, or that it isn't being confused with speed reading.

The challenge has been put out and refused with ridiculous 'I don't need to demonstrate how good PR is' responses when speed reading VS PR competitions have been raised.

And yet the book is still being sold and the courses stil be charged for, yet apparently PR is not worth defending.

Well, based on what I'm reading, you don't seem to accept anecdotes as trustworthy (or maybe I'm misunderstanding). What's the basis for not taking that into consideration?

"This NASA study ain't going to happen, it's trotted out each year whenever someone asks about studies, I was actually waiting for someone to allude to it, and on cue....."

Uhm.. the study was done, and the research claimed it's not necessarily better than regular reading. see here:
http://www.learningstrategies.com/forum/ubb/Forum8/HTML/003666.html

However, the link to the pdf file is gone, you can find it using a P2P client if you search for it. That's how I found it

"C'mon you have to admit this house of cards falls down at the slightest breeze of serious investigation."

How specifically is this a house of cards? Learning strategies corporation has been in existence for 20 years. If I remember correctly, the news channel featuring Paul Scheele (which is available on the website) was an attempt to debunk photoreading, yet the broadcast fell in his favor. Dr. J Michael Bennett was asked to review it, and as you can tell, he ended up joining forces with LSC because it made sense to him.

"Given the massive amounts of questions about every process by people who OWN the latest revision of the book which are posted here, I would have thought it may have covered these areas more, rather than just incrementing the revision number without any important updates."

Again, they're in the process of updating. A bit slow, I might add, but it's something.

"From literally reading every single post on here, over the years from the archive, I've yet to see any proof that PR works, or that it isn't being confused with speed reading."

None of these posts are intended to be evidence, if that's what you're looking for. But the website has plenty of anecdotal evidence.
And it seems most of the people who drop by are those who are seeking to understand how the process works or how to improve one's skills. Those who are pros at PR don't necessarily come here as often and post positive stories all the time. But again it seems none of them would qualify under your conditions.

"The challenge has been put out and refused with ridiculous 'I don't need to demonstrate how good PR is' responses when speed reading VS PR competitions have been raised."

I would like to see that done. It'd be interesting. Perhaps there is something out there. I wouldn't know. But is this a necessary criteria for one to know that it works or not?

"And yet the book is still being sold and the courses stil be charged for, yet apparently PR is not worth defending."

How specifically is it not worth defending? Personally I don't see the need to defend it either. The other day I photoread 2 books and the total time I spent was about 3.5 hours. I found the answers that I wanted, and that would normally take 10 hours of normal reading. I don't have to defend the fact that I saved 6.5 hours.

Sincerely,

-Jason

Hi Jason,

Anecdotal evidence from the author with some rather sad examples in his book, coupled with very few people here having any success all of who may or may not be working for learningstrategies without any positive studies, is, I hope you agree, worthless.

I can see why LS are not keen on this report to be made available. I was wrong about the Nasa study 'perpetually being in the works' I had no idea it was buried.

Specifically, it's a house of cards because its basic premise seems to be founded upon misinformation, made up references and dodgy 'proof' from long ago (radio and tv)

Bring it up to date, if it was worth demonstrating years ago, why isn't it worth it now?

Paul has abandoned PR and seems to be making money with all sorts of other ventures (Feng Shui, for God's sake)

Can you state that Dr J MB was not offered any money to join forces? What has his joining forces brought to LS, IE how has his input changed the PR book that Paul wrote?

Ok, when they DO update the book, my question will be answered, until then it remains very poorly revised.

I AM looking for evidence, though it seems that when there is it's buried (Nasa) . Please point me to where some studies have been performed.

Anything that is asking for money from people, almost demands defending.

I'm not sure why you just wrote a very long response, defending PR, yet claim you don't see the need to.

PRing a book/PDF online is quite amusing, IE why wouldn't you just use search or in a book an index?

Anyway thanks for replying, I look forward to hearing the spin Alex will put on this.

I did the deluxe photoreading course some months ago with mixed results. This MondayI went along with Paul's reminder to read a book a month. It was a pretty extensive book of about 300 pages. On Wednesday I realized as I was super reading and dipping..."Hey I know all this stuff", probably because I wasn't taking it so seriously. So now I have my 5 different books, by 5 different authors on a particular subject ready to do tomorrow. I'm now a confident believer!

Wikipedia has a good overview under "Speed Reading," although I suspect now that I've pointed it out, PR supporters will go in and edit it. Here are relevant excerpts:

History

More recently, speed reading courses and books have been developed promising the consumer even higher increases in reading speed, some at 10,000 words per minute with high comprehension. With specific reference to pseudoscience concepts, they have even claimed to be able to extract meaning out of consciously unnoticed text from the para-consciousness or subconscious. These courses go by various titles such as photo-reading (1994), mega-speedreading (1997) and alpha-netics (1999). They tend to be accompanied with the sale of expensive electronic machinery, or mind altering accessories. Reading experts refer to them as snake oil reading lessons due to their high dependence on the suspension of the consumer’s disbelief.

The claims of speed reading courses and books

Speed reading courses variously claim that not all information in text needs to be covered whilst speed reading. Some claim that speed reading involves skipping text (exactly as has been measured during studies on skimming), whereas other speed reading promoters claim that all of the text is processed, but with some or most becoming subconsciously processed. Similarly, some courses claim that text should be serially processed whereas others say that information is processed in a more haphazard or ad hoc fashion. Terminology such as vision span and subvocalization are often used as explanations, but findings of research into these terms is not presented.

Speed reading concepts

The various explanations used to promote the practice of speed reading come from a wide variety of sources including that of popular psychology, urban myths about the brain and pseudoscience. As concepts they go out of the context of accepted reading theories.
These concepts include:
Cyclopic perception (peripheral vision for reading)
Cerebral hemisphere differences
Paraconcious processing (Buzan 2000)
Visual reading
Auditory reading
Word awareness
Cognitive window
Context pool (Speed Reading Made EZ)
Subconscious Photoprogramming (Scheele 1998)

Scholarly research on rapid and speed reading courses

Some reading research has indicated that instructing a group or class of readers to speed up their reading rate will increase reading comprehension to a limited degree. In fact inexperienced readers will often choose a rate slower than is appropriate for the material being read. However, this is only true to up to a point. When reading rate is increased to beyond the reading for comprehension rate (over approximately 400wpm), comprehension will drop to an unacceptable level (below 50% comprehension) as measured on standardized reading tests (Cunningham et al 1990).

Empirical research on reading rate indicates that reading for comprehension is best achieved at 200-350 words per minute. This has been found to be constant for all competent readers (Homa 1983). Research conducted on rapid reading courses indicates that they are actually teaching a limited kind of skimming (Carver 1992). Skimming can be learned easily without the need for an expensive course, and involves reading at a rapid rate for the purpose of searching rather than comprehension (Carver 1992). As a habitual reading rate, it is inappropriate for sufficiently comprehending newspaper articles, textbooks, and novels (Allyn & Bacon, 1987).

Research on subvocalization, or auding, shows that it is a natural process which helps comprehension, and can be encouraged, especially for the purpose of reading high quality prose (Carver, 1990). Subvocalizing will only decrease reading rate if it is accompanied by obviously visible movements of the mouth, jaw or throat.

Research conducted on speed reading experts who claim to be able to read at over 1000 words per minute with full comprehension has found that their claims are false (Homa 1983). Even speed reading rates of between 1000-2000wpm have been found to result in comprehension levels at around 50% or lower. Also, when presented with two paragraphs of combined but unrelated material, speed reading experts claimed that they understood it, but were completely unaware that it consisted of two obviously different passages mixed together (Allyn & Bacon, 1987).

One interesting outcome from research into speed reading is that speed readers tend to poorly assess their own comprehension level when compared to normal readers who are simply instructed to skim a text (Allyn & Bacon, 1987). The skimming group were also found to be better at extracting the details out of a text than speed readers. This may be explained with reference to speed reading practices training out the ability to judge comprehension (Allyn & Bacon, 1987) and leading the reader to adopt misconceptions about reading (Harris and Sipay 1990).

Professional reading rate researchers' general advice about speed reading courses is simply not to enroll (Carver 1992)(Perfetti 1995). Skimming can be learned easily without the need for expensive courses, and comprehensive study techniques can be learned for free or for a small fee at community colleges (Carver 1992). Indeed, great results can be obtained using reading rates appropriate to the material, a wide repertoire of learning strategies, and an accurate judgment of reading comprehension (Harris and Sipay 1990).

[This message has been edited by Publius (edited May 05, 2006).]

It is disappointing, if what you say is correct, that Paul has included a phantom endorsement of his text on Photoreading.

I know is that Photoreading has been working for me with astounding results.

I was a great skeptic of PR, when I began, and if I had seen this recent thread, when I was starting, I would have thrown photoreading out the door. However, I know photoreading works and has turned my academic and vocational practices around positively 180 degrees!!

I am sure there must be a reason that John Grinder's endorsement was put in there, and have faith that Paul or Alex will soon have an explanation. Even if they don't I am not going to throw out a system that works for me and I will continue to recommend it to those who are interested. I just know there must be an explanation?? Alex??!! Paul??!!
Pete????

As for the negative research against PR that is being sited, -- that research effort to debunk PR has already been addressed in earlier threads over the months I have been using photoreading.

If people are looking for a reason to prove something doesn't work, they can usually find it. People criticize the education offered at Harvard University, the validity of Einstein's theories, the ethics of Rush Limbaugh, the motives of the late Mother Theresa--- nobody is exempt.

I hope these threads do not discourage any new beginning photoreaders, as they would be losing out on learning a great system, in my opinion.

Raleigh -- I think other perspectives and points of view, including skeptical and contrarian research are part of a healthy dialogue.

But here's a test I suggest you try for a month or two. It's a test I conducted on myself; your results of course may differ.

Continue reading using all the steps of the PhotoReading system EXCEPT the PRing step. See after a month if you are still having the same success. If so, it does call into question the system. Because if you take out the PR step from the PRWMS, what are you left with? That's right, a process that's very very similar to SQ3R or other systems that are taught in some schools and are publically available to all.

Just another perspective.