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He says this on section 14: Until 1965 no one bothered to check Cattell’s famous experiment with the tachistoscope. When they did, it was found Cattell had been
by Radix 18y ago
He says this on section 14: Until 1965 no one bothered to check Cattell’s famous experiment with the tachistoscope. When they did, it was found Cattell had been dead wrong. People read letters, not words.
I'm not sure why he claims people don't read whole words. We read groups of letters not the letters themselves.
Relatedly, I met a man who claimed to be a speed reader. When pressed he insisted it was true and that he read lines and paragraphs at a time with good retention and understanding. He went on saying he and a group of kids had been taught to speed read by their elementary school principal for his PHD thesis.
- tokenadult 18y agoI've read a fair amount of the eye-tracking literature, and it's true that people read letters or (small) groups of letters if they are reading.
- delackner 18y agoI haven't read any of the literature, but can't both claims be true? Experienced readers may mentally first become aware of whole words or blocks of words, but they could easily just not be aware of the finer-grained eye movements that are going into that perception.
- Radix 18y agoWell, it looks like you're right. Which makes reading more complicated than I had thought. Please mod me down for being incorrect. Thank you for the interesting information tokenadult.