I could buy the speed reading claims, perhaps at slightly slower rates. One of the cool things about language and our brains is you can miss letters and get order mixed up, and instantly guess what was meant with a very high rate of success.

Emxalpe: I persmue you sitll udnr snatd tis?

sliverstorm, I don't want to take this too far off topic, but what are the rates you're hearing of that you have trouble believing? I read at a little over 1,300 words per minute (and I keep getting faster). As to comprehension, without taking a test it's hard to say, but by reading a section of material for a few minutes, writing down everything I can remember without looking at the book, then re-reading to see what I've missed, I seem to get roughly 80% comprehension, which I find acceptable for most things (and it keeps getting better through practice).

Disclaimer: That's depending on the material, I read at about half that rate (around 600 wpm) if it's extremely technical or dense, or a good deal faster in anything at or below a high school reading level.

What I have trouble believing is that anyone could, using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (which was the subject of the comment I replied to) process characters (or words) that flash on the screen as fast as (or faster than) 25fps.

Problem with serial presentation is of course, you cannot skip words or process words in parallel. I suspect when you attain 1,300wpm, you are focusing your eyes on half a page or perhaps the entire page, and only skimming sentences and absorbing key words and ideas, rather than processing each word one at a time.

Ah, my apologies for misunderstanding your comment. That's what I get for attempting rational thought at one in the morning.

Before I learned to speed read the way I currently do, I tried learning using RSVP. In my personal experience I didn't find it very helpful, and my comprehension rates (when using RSVP) plummeted. I'm in complete agreement there.

As to my 1,300wpm, you're partially correct. 1,200wpm is just about the limit at which I can read word by word, line by line in a book, using my hand as a pacer. After 1,200, I stop dropping conjunctions, pronouns, and prepositions, and anything that can be inferred through context or isn't necessary to the meaning of the sentence (e.g. - absorbing key words and ideas, but still more precise than 1/2 a page at a time).

Here's the book I learned from so you can judge the merits based upon something better than my attempted explanation: http://www.amazon.com/Breakthrough-Rapid-Reading-Peter-Kump/...