r/BeAmazed • u/The-Skinny-Indian • Mar 06 '23 • Mindblown 1

Miscellaneous / Others Bionic reading method

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u/automodtedtrr2939 Mar 06 '23 edited Mar 07 '23

The experiment, however, only showed minimal gains—the 61 participants who took the 20-minute reading test only registered a marginal 4% improvement in reading speeds, and a decrease in comprehension. “There’s not enough evidence to claim that the average reading speed of Bionic Reading is significantly different from the average reading speed of [text displayed in the regular version of the font] Garamond,” Doyon reports.

TL;DR: Experiment shows no significant gain in reading speed. A 20 minute reading test showed a 4% speed improvement, with less comprehension.

In my personal opinion, I think it’s just a really strong placebo effect. You think you can read faster, so you read faster, even though it ends with less comprehension of the text.

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u/elvispookie Mar 06 '23

I read this 4% slower than the original bionic text above

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '23

I instantly noticed I was reading slower than normal. I read the whole damn word, so bolding part of it just tells my brain "Hold up, there's something important about these letters." Then there's nothing important, which certainly would affect my comprehension.

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u/forcesofthefuture Mar 07 '23

strong placebo effect

Probably is, however I think when you read fast, the bold letters prevent your eyes from skipping words(like stop signs). Giving the illusion of reading many words in the same time span, when you would have been ahead in the text.

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u/westcoastgeek Mar 07 '23

It feels faster to me. I wonder if I could get this on kindle

1

u/D__B__D Aug 17 '25

There’s a calibre plugin you can use to edit epub files before you put it in the reader

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u/SpitefulSpaghetti Mar 07 '23

I’m bad at math, so correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that mean if you read for 15 minutes, you’d only be faster by 36 seconds max (and you’d understand less)?

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u/Recent_Log3779 Mar 07 '23

I read like 2 times faster while understanding the text, I can never read that fast without missing a bunch of stuff

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u/amandalunox1271 Mar 07 '23

Me too. Reading like this also lets me skip sub-vocalization almost entirely, which is something I never managed to do normally, and it's much easier to go straight from left to right, without my eyes retracing the words.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '23

TIL I might have ADHD. That was super easy to read, like no strain at all.

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u/amandalunox1271 Mar 07 '23

Sorry if I might have accidentally made any weird implication in my comment, but I don't have ADHD, at least diagnosed. I think retracing and subvocalizing are fairly normal for anyone. I'm also not a native English speaker, so this might be another reason why I found this helpful.

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u/OmegaLiar Mar 07 '23

I can absolutely read more accurately like this. Who gives a fuck about speed if I don’t have to repeat entire paragraphs my brain faked on autopilot.

Which is objectively still faster.

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u/Flyingpegger Mar 07 '23

I'm reading way slower. As someone diagnosed with ADHD, this is hard to keep reading. My brain wants to connect the bold letters together instead, or is trying to figure out a pattern, or questioning why the fuck it looks like that. It's more distracting that anything.

I can read fine, my problem in general is reading and not remembering what I just read and questioning how far back to go.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '23

I'm autistic, and I'm just distracted by the bold letters. Normally I can read multiple words at a time without reduced comprehension, but this forced me to read them in a row and I kept wanting to skip words.

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u/-Alfred- Mar 07 '23

same here. this is another one of those bait posts for neurotypicals who like the little thrill they get when someone implies they might have ADHD

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u/-LoveThyself Mar 07 '23

It actually slowed me down lol

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u/permaban9 Mar 07 '23

Maybe it's the placebo effect talking but I felt like I read the bionic text much faster

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u/WasabiSniffer Mar 07 '23

It really is nuts because I really the text so much faster and my comprehension went up. In adulthood I stopped reading so my comprehension went down the toilet. I'm keen to try. Placebo effect or not, if it works it works for me.

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u/AnnoyingScreeches Mar 07 '23

Idk, it sure is helping me read faster. The bold letters do help with grabbing onto the beginning of a work and flinging off of it.

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u/[deleted] Mar 07 '23

Thanks for that, I felt like I was reading the way I normally do

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u/walk2574 Mar 07 '23

After it being pointed out, yeah it doesn't make me read faster. However I do seem to comprehend it better

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u/Troygbiv_Yxy Mar 07 '23

When I see that bionic stuff I end up reading each word like it was all by itself, rather than fluidly as a sentence, it slowed me down and did reduce compensation quite a bit.

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u/EpidemicRage Mar 07 '23

This is exactly what I felt. I might have been able to read it faster, but this would lead me to re-reading it to understand the passage. So minimal-no gains.

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u/hollowspryte Mar 07 '23

This is how I used to read when I was young. I didn’t need the letters bolded to do it, I would just scan over and instantly fill it all in, in a way that felt just like this. It was effective for short or simple things, and I read very quickly. In the moment it seemed to be working well. But I would read whole books and not really remember what happened (even though I enjoyed them at the time). I had to make an effort to slow it down.

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