By JOHN RICHARD SCHROCK
While listening to spoken explanation is our primary mode of learning, reading is also an important channel of learning. Just as there is a speech chain, there is a chain of events where a writer communicates with a reader. It is a science that benefits every journalist, every teacher and all others who wish to communicate with readers today or far into the future.
The pioneer book that provides the science behind the writing-reading process as science is “Psychophysics of Reading in Normal and Low Vision” by Gordon Legge, released in 2007.
In an era of computer and online hype, Legge assembles our current understanding of the physical limitations of reading print, both on-screen and on-paper. Legge notes: “Reading involves more than visual processing, more than cognition, more than motor control; it requires the integration of all of these processes.” Legge puts together what is known about this topic, and his book includes a CD with 20 seminal papers from 1985 to 2002.
Teachers have long been taught in “teaching reading” courses to calculate the reading level by counting the number of letters in words, and the number of words in sentences. But children can read text that is well above the levels calculated in such simple formulas. And reading is far more complex, including as “length of line,” and “space between lines” and overall format.
Legge’s work set the standard for measuring reading speed and performance. Eye movement is a major factor, the leaping forward being a combination of “saccade length” and average “fixation time.” Most of us assume that we recognize words by analyzing each letter, and that we then read each word—but that is not correct. We may read a word that ought to be in the sentence without directly focusing on it.
“Reading accuracy,” “visual search” and “visual comfort” are factors that determine “reading endurance.” As a child learning to read in the 1950s, I remember the push to get my whole class into speed reading. But it was obvious that the faster I read beyond my normal speed, the less I comprehended. So-called “speed reading” was actually skimming that sampled only part of the text with no added perceptual ability.
Legge defines the important properties of letters in text: contrast and size. The number of letters, arranged side-by-side that can be recognized without moving the eye is the “visual span.” Science, a discipline noted for very long words, poses a problem to a student with a limited visual span—it is a handicap. To use the more precise terminology: “…a narrower visual span should result in a stronger dependence of threshold exposure time on word length.”
Legge is the originator of the MNREAD acuity chart and Minnesota Low-Vision Reading Test for measuring reading speed where it is not affected by the reader’s acuity limit. Our maximum normal visual reading speed is about 300 words-per-minute. It is limited by eye movements. However, if electronics are set up to present sequences of words so that the beginning of each word starts at the same location and the eye does not have to move, a person can read 2-3 times faster.
Older folks need to read under brighter light; the reasoning is here: “…the average 60-year old eye transmits about one third the amount of light of the average 20-year-old eye.”
Similar to the speaker who must consider the listener’s various understanding of words, the writer must consider the reader’s experience base before choosing the best words to convey the right meaning. Both the speech chain and the writing-reading chain come down to: no experience, no meaning.
To the parent or teacher, there are lessons to be learned from the research in Legge’s book. As screen resolution increases, will it approach the current superiority of printed text? Will our eye physiology and mental processing always impose a limit on how fast we read with comprehension? And what are the consequences of the new non-printed media: should students forced to read everything on screens in school be required to go to high school for five years?