{"id":1182,"date":"2010-08-08T02:59:05","date_gmt":"2010-08-08T02:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/?p=34"},"modified":"2010-08-08T02:59:05","modified_gmt":"2010-08-08T02:59:05","slug":"speed-reading-help-with-fixation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/08\/speed-reading-help-with-fixation\/","title":{"rendered":"Speed Reading Help (With Fixation)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Now I want to spend some time talking about something readers do called Fixation<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Fixation itself isn\u2019t a habit.\u00a0 It\u2019s something your eyes do naturally.\u00a0 But when it\u2019s not done right, fixation causes inefficient reading.\u00a0 I realize this probably sounds a little confusing right now, so let me start by explaining what fixation is.<\/p>\n

You probably already know that before images can register in your mind, your eyes need to stop moving and still themselves.\u00a0 Well, fixation is basically the eyes\u2019 ability to stop moving so they can focus.\u00a0\u00a0 If it wasn\u2019t possible to fixate, everything you looked at would be one big blur.<\/p>\n

The size of what you\u2019re looking at doesn\u2019t matter and neither does it matter how close or far off in the distance it is.\u00a0 When you want to focus, you have to settle your eyes on something and allow them the chance to be still.<\/p>\n

And that same principle applies to the words you read.\u00a0 When you want your eyes to see the words you\u2019re trying to read, your eyes must make frequent stops on the words in each sentence.\u00a0 Your eyes don\u2019t have to stop very long.\u00a0 In fact, they don\u2019t and really, they can\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

Because the process of reading requires that your eyes continually move forward from one sentence to the next, usually moving to the right until reaching the end of the line.\u00a0 Once there, your eyes swing back to the left where they begin their journey across the next line.\u00a0 And so on and so on.<\/p>\n

Wondering how your eyes can stop while at the same time, still move?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good question and the reason is because eye fixations don\u2019t operate alone.<\/p>\n

Fixations, which are also appropriately called eye stops, occur countless times a day.\u00a0 And most of the time, you don\u2019t even realize they\u2019re happening.\u00a0 Working alongside fixations are these other things called eye jumps, which are also known as saccades.\u00a0 Saccades are the rapid intermittent eye movements that occur as the eyes fixate and then change focus as they jump from one point to another.<\/p>\n

When the eyes stop or fixate on a word, the brief pause gives the brain a chance to comprehend the words upon which the eyes are fixated.<\/p>\n

Remember I told you that phonetic reading involves sounding out a word, voicing it or hearing in it your mind, and then comprehending it? \u00a0Well, now I\u2019m going to tell you that anyone still in the old habit of reading phonetically reads on a word-by-word basis.\u00a0 If you still read phonetically, which you probably do, your eyes will stop or fixate on nearly every word you read, and then take time to decode each one, before moving on to the next.<\/p>\n

Let me give you an example to help make what I\u2019m saying clearer.\u00a0 If there are 10 words in every line of text you read, and you read word-for-word, it means your eyes fixate about 9 times every time you read one short line of text.\u00a0 Multiply that by several lines and it doesn\u2019t take a mathematician to realize that\u2019s quite a bit of eye jumping and stopping!<\/p>\n

Breaking it down a little differently, most readers fixate about 4 times each second, which means the eyes stop every quarter of a second.\u00a0 If you\u2019re a typical reader, that means you\u2019re reading only 4 words per second!\u00a0 I realize 4 words per second sounds impressive, but as you\u2019ll see later on, it\u2019s not.\u00a0 It\u2019s actually pretty slow and you definitely have a lot of room to improve.<\/p>\n

Up until about a century ago, it was commonly believed that everyone read one word at a time.\u00a0 Until then, fluctuations in reading speed were attributed to how quickly readers comprehended what they read; the more comprehension, the quicker the read.<\/p>\n

At the time, this sounded like a good theory.\u00a0 But like any good theory, it was soon challenged.\u00a0 Researchers wanted to find out whether something else was happening during reading, so they initiated experiments to find out.\u00a0 And it\u2019s a good thing they did because those experiments are what led to the detection of eye fixations.<\/p>\n

Researchers realized that rather than a steady pace, reading consisted of a series of \u201cfits and starts\u201d or fixations and saccades.\u00a0\u00a0 Along with this discovery came the realization that, rather than quicker word identification and comprehension, fewer fixations actually led to faster reading.<\/p>\n

Further experiments lead researchers to the other realization that a single fixation point didn\u2019t always consist of a single word.\u00a0 Their experiments showed that oftentimes, a single fixation point included several words.\u00a0 They also realized that because we have peripheral vision, many readers could also see some of the words and letters on both sides of a fixation point.\u00a0 They called this expanded view the \u201cvision span\u201d and determined that it can be either narrow or wide.<\/p>\n

Today, anyone who reads word-for-word is considered as having a narrow span and anyone capable of reading more words during a single fixation is considered to have a wide eye span.<\/p>\n

The reason I bring up vision span now is because it also has an effect on reading speed.\u00a0 Fewer eye fixations combined with an increased vision span and multiple-word fixation points all add up to faster reading speeds.<\/p>\n

So, if you want to be a faster reader, you\u2019ll have to take off your blinders and expand your vision span.\u00a0 You\u2019ll also have to break the old habit you learned long ago of fixating on individual words and develop the new habit of including multiple words in a single fixation point.<\/p>\n

Later in the post, I\u2019ll teach you specific activities to help expand your vision and develop multiple word fixation points.\u00a0 But right now, there are other two things I want you to know about fixation.<\/p>\n

First, the more familiar you are with the words you\u2019re reading, the fewer fixations you\u2019ll make.\u00a0 When you read words or a writing style you\u2019re unfamiliar with, your eyes tend to stop more often because your brain hasn\u2019t created the necessary associations.<\/p>\n

Think back to any time you tried interpreting a difficult text.\u00a0 It took you a long time, didn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Because we don\u2019t talk like that anymore, you didn\u2019t understand the words and the increased fixations slowed your reading.<\/p>\n

The point I\u2019m trying to make is that the larger your vocabulary, the more words your brain recognizes right away.\u00a0 And when you recognize more words right away, you\u2019re able to take in more words with each eye fixation.\u00a0 So, the more you expand your vocabulary, the more effective you\u2019ll be at speed reading.<\/p>\n

My second point has to do with familiarity.\u00a0 If the topic you\u2019re reading is familiar to you, you naturally have more confidence in what you’re reading.\u00a0 When you\u2019re more confident, you\u2019re less likely to doubt yourself and regress.\u00a0 As a result, you can take in more words with each eye fixation.<\/p>\n

I realize it\u2019s not possible to be an expert in every field.\u00a0 But without a doubt, the more you do know, whether from your education or your life experience or otherwise, the faster you\u2019ll read because you\u2019re more familiar with the material.\u00a0 And when you increase your reading speed you\u2019ll read more, you\u2019ll enjoy reading more, and gain more knowledge as a result!<\/p>\n

Video Version of Post
\n[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=QOon26dpVbo[\/youtube]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now I want to spend some time talking about something readers do called Fixation. Fixation itself isn\u2019t a habit.\u00a0 It\u2019s something your eyes do naturally.\u00a0 But when it\u2019s not done right, fixation causes inefficient reading.\u00a0…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speed-reading"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spreeder.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}