Daily Wisdom: Is Speed Reading Possible?

The creators of a new app called Spritz are claiming to have developed a program that will greatly increase our ability to read quickly, something seemingly quite necessary in an era in which we read 54,000 words a day.

Not everyone agrees that’s possible:

Keith Rayner, a psycholinguist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told me that he thinks “all speed-reading claims are nonsensical.”

Spritz’ technique, called rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP, isn’t new, and Rayner said it causes the same comprehension problems as other strategies.

“We’ve known forever that people can go fast with one word at a time,” he said. “But if you have them read more than single sentences, then comprehension breaks down because words are coming at you faster than you can deal with them.”