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).]
