An experiment to test if Bionic Reading helps you read faster

In my experience, more people need to work on reading comprehension than reading speed. Comprehension is what actually matters, and is what seems to be in short supply. If Bionic Reading promised increased reading speed with no loss of comprehension, and provided it, all it would mean is that people would misunderstand things at a faster rate.

I find it really difficult and annoying -- and thereby slow -- to read with these &quot;fixation&quot; points as that&#x27;s just not how I feel eyes work... I want my eyes to scan across the text rather than ratcheting from one word to the next word, which is both slow and exhausting. The words and &quot;fixation&quot; is thereby just a massive distraction. Hell: if I really really need to read quickly I try to do this thing where I scan my eyes <i>diagonally downwards</i> across the text to let my brain sort out entire lines of words at once... the last thing I want is to go single word by single word.

It&#x27;s cool to see that someone is trying to test these claims. Not long ago, the BR site was shared on my work Slack and there were some that immediately argued &quot;Yup, I can read faster using this and comprehend everything&quot;, which is quite a bold claim to make after reading a paragraph. Personally, having bolded letters sprinkled across my screen feels noisy and distracting, so it&#x27;s a bit hard to get past that mental block.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;speed.readwise.io" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;speed.readwise.io</a><p><pre><code> Your results Typeface Bionic Reading Literata Article 1 591 WPM 352 WPM Article 2 657 WPM 457 WPM Average Speed 624 WPM 405 WPM You read 43% faster with Bionic Reading </code></pre> Guess gotta give this a try for storybooks...<p>maybe some enterprising and bored HN nerd can make a Calibre plugin that converts regular epubs to bionic reading enabled epub files<p>----<p>but the truth is, for the aforementioned storybooks, often I just LOOK at a whole paragraph or even the whole page and just pick out the relevant word of two in a story.<p>Unlike actual educational content, where the exact text matters, in fiction, after having developed a hobby to read for entertainment for so long and having gotten used to so many tropes, I just often just breeze through and look for the word that confirms which direction the author is taking that paragraph in, and often just glide over the paragraph and go to the next one.<p>It&#x27;s like learning how to drive, I guess. At some point you are not supposed to look at every thing, you just take the overall picture and just go.<p>Not sure what is achieved by making every road sign and billboard flashing neon is supposed to achieve in such a scenario. Not all words are worthy of equal attention, most are meant to be glossed over.<p>____<p>but for actual educational purposes, the best test IMHO is to use it for the boring but important texts, like training manuals. See if it actually helps people learn and retain more import information about the new tool or procedure they are learning about.

A few pages down is the answer to what (hopefully) many are wondering:<p>&quot;Here&#x27;s how we&#x27;ve designed the pilot study:<p>...<p>4. After finishing each document, we asked three multiple choice questions to control for and confirm comprehension.&quot;

Here are some bookmarklets I developed to cut out the extra formatting, bolding, and other content on websites that makes them difficult to read. I would appreciate any feedback or modifications for improvement.<p>Literata font with a peach background color to optimize reading speed and no selective bolding:<p>javascript:void function(){javascript:(function(){var a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll(&quot;p, title, a, ul&quot;),c=[],e=&quot;&quot;,f=&quot;&quot;,g=&quot;&quot;,h=0,k=0,l=&quot;&quot;,m=&quot;&quot;,n=window.open(&quot;&quot;,&quot;_blank&quot;);for(var d in b){var i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+&quot;\n&quot;+i)}for(f=c,e=f.replace(&#x2F;\n&#x2F;g,&quot; &lt;br&gt;&lt;&#x2F;br&gt; &quot;),g=e.split(&quot; &quot;),h=0;h&lt;g.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length&#x2F;3)+1,l=&quot;&lt;span style=&#x27;font-weight:lighter&#x27;&gt;&quot;+g[h].substring(0,k)+&quot;&lt;&#x2F;span&gt;&lt;span style=&#x27;font-weight:lighter&#x27;&gt;&quot;+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+&quot;&lt;&#x2F;span&gt; &quot;,&quot;.&quot;==g[h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+=&quot;&lt;span style=&#x27;color:red&#x27;&gt; &lt;&#x2F;span&gt;&quot;),m+=l;n.document.write(&quot;&lt;html&gt;&lt;p style=&#x27;background-color:#EDD1B0;font-size:40;line-height:200%25;font-family:Literata&#x27;&gt;&quot;+m+&quot;&lt;&#x2F;p&gt;&lt;&#x2F;html&gt;&quot;)})()}();<p>Selective bolding with a peach background for those who find a benefit:<p>javascript:void function(){javascript:(function(){var a=Math.floor,b=document.querySelectorAll(&quot;p, title, a, ul&quot;),c=[],e=&quot;&quot;,f=&quot;&quot;,g=&quot;&quot;,h=0,k=0,l=&quot;&quot;,m=&quot;&quot;,n=window.open(&quot;&quot;,&quot;_blank&quot;);for(var d in b){var i=b[d].textContent;i%26%26(c=c+&quot;\n&quot;+i)}for(f=c,e=f.replace(&#x2F;\n&#x2F;g,&quot; &lt;br&gt;&lt;&#x2F;br&gt; &quot;),g=e.split(&quot; &quot;),h=0;h&lt;g.length;h++)k=a(g[h].length&#x2F;3)+1,l=&quot;&lt;span style=&#x27;font-weight:bolder&#x27;&gt;&quot;+g[h].substring(0,k)+&quot;&lt;&#x2F;span&gt;&lt;span style=&#x27;font-weight:lighter&#x27;&gt;&quot;+g[h].substring(k,g[h].length)+&quot;&lt;&#x2F;span&gt; &quot;,&quot;.&quot;==g[h].substring(g[h].length-1,g[h].length)%26%26(l+=&quot;&lt;span style=&#x27;color:red&#x27;&gt; * &lt;&#x2F;span&gt;&quot;),m+=l;n.document.write(&quot;&lt;html&gt;&lt;p style=&#x27;background-color:#EDD1B0;font-size:40;line-height:200%25;font-family:Arial&#x27;&gt;&quot;+m+&quot;&lt;&#x2F;p&gt;&lt;&#x2F;html&gt;&quot;)})()}();

Linked at the end of the article is the short (15 minutes maybe) self-test: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;speed.readwise.io&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;speed.readwise.io&#x2F;</a>.<p>Curious what results people here got. I got 23% faster with BR but I couldn&#x27;t tell if I was just trying harder.

It&#x27;s not a perfect test, but as a statistician, my preliminary takeaway from this is that bionic reading doesn&#x27;t work.<p>results are generally in the ballpark of insignificant, and there seems to be a very weak inverse relationship between reading speed and comprehension.<p>which is to say, on preliminary it looks like most &quot;speed reading&quot; claims (I.e. quackery).

I read once that when we read, our eyes bounce along the tops of the letters. A demonstration removed the lower parts of the letters, and interestingly, I was able to still read the words. I would like to see this same test but with a font that removed the lower half of the words in each sentence. Just for kicks and giggles...

I have dyslexia, and I can&#x27;t scan read(if that is the right word), I have to basically read entire words. This stuff forces me to scan read, which means I just don&#x27;t understand the text anymore.

If the authors of the article are reading this: I would also do a test to see if the variance of the two groups (bionic vs normal) is significantly different. I did not check it but bionic might be very beneficial to some and detrimental to others which would not be seen when looking at the mean (you should also plot the distributions, it pretty much always a good first reflex).

I notice that I no longer spend energy actively scanning lines with bionic reading - my eyes snap automatically. I&#x27;m able to look at the text &quot;from a distance&quot; and the words just enter my mind, and I did get 31% faster reading from bionics according to this test.

i could concentrate myself better on the regular text<p>with Bionic Reading i had to re-read some sentences until i&#x27;ve processed them correctly<p>note that i&#x27;m not a native speaker<p>personal result:<p>Bionic Reading: 234 WPM<p>Literata: 262 WPM<p>&quot;You read 11% faster with Literata&quot;

&gt; When you click the button below, you&#x27;ll begin reading the first of two Paul Graham essays, each approximately 5 minutes in length.<p>My idea of hell. I&#x27;ll wait for a better choice of source material.

&gt;you should notice a funny pattern: almost every person&#x27;s fastest font was the font they received on the first article.<p>Is it possible that people &quot;calibrate&quot; their brains towards a specific reading style, and that first style induces the calibration? Similar to how you can calibrate to quickly pick out a picture of a specific object, from a gallery of pictures, after you&#x27;ve prepared yourself to see that picture.

Faster with Bionic by 6%. Less of a difference than I expected although it does feel easier for some reason.<p>I have thought about using Bionic or Dyslexic fonts but I&#x27;m worried that it&#x27;d cause a change over time that makes it even harder to read plain format text.<p>My reading speed overall is slow compared to others. I notice my reading speed is only fast and accurate when I&#x27;m extremely interested in a topic.

778 WPM with Bionic, 672 without. Bionic appears to have increased my speed by 15% but it&#x27;s also possible that I was just paying more attention to the articles implementing the technique. It&#x27;s unfortunate that the comprehension scores aren&#x27;t given though (unless I&#x27;m missing something?)

Bionic reading: 317 WPM Literata: 317 WPM You read 0% faster with Bionic Reading<p>I guess I’m a pretty consistent slow reader.

421 wpm with bionic reading, 447 without, but I had the impression of being faster with bionic reading, something about reading being more smooth. I guess it&#x27;s smoother but slower overall.

nice! Surprised to see I ended up reading faster without bionic reading

I don&#x27;t understand.<p>From their own metrics - speed went up by a lower percentage than comprehension dropped.<p>This sounds like a terrible idea...

I’m not 100% sure it works for everybody, but it probably helps that English have shorter words where the stress tends to be on the first syllable, doesn’t have genders, always requires an explicit subject and has simple verb conjugations.<p>Would it work with languages that have longer words and a case system?

19% faster with Bionic Reading. I&#x27;d like to try again with different source articles that are not already part of my field of expertise. I felt as if I could answer the comprehension questions without having read the articles.

But does it help you retain what you read? Speed workout comprehension is pointless.

Interesting website. I never considered in my 30-something years of reading that I was a slow reader but apparently I am (&lt;250 WPM). Most of my reading (outside of the internet) is scholarly articles for my job.

10% faster with literata, altho with bionic i had 0 issues losing tracks of where I was or skipping lines but accident, which made me think i was reading faster, but apparently i was not.

Many of the comprehension questions could have been answered without reading the article. But some were quizzing irrelevant parts of the text. It&#x27;s a hard balance to strike

Your results Readwise logo Typeface Bionic Reading Literata Article 1 479 WPM 574 WPM Article 2 463 WPM 507 WPM Average Speed 471 WPM 541 WPM<p>You read 14% faster with Literata

I get the opposite effect. Instead of reading each word, I start reading the parts of the word which is not normally how I read. It&#x27;s very jarring.

I found Bionic 10% slower than Literata.<p>But I also found I am a verrrry slow reader. My reading speed came to 147 wpm. Any recommendation to improve this?

Why do people want to read faster? You can also write tersely. Or not overload yourself with useless information

1% faster with bionic reading, but I was eating chips and dip so maybe I was just distracted by stuffing my face.

Another sort of physically interesting thing that might unexpectedly help some people:<p>read with the opendyslexic font.

I believe the screen is a huge factor in it as well that should be accounted for.

respect author do himself experiment! he even calculated p-value for it, also result did not recommended his method, but he let me trust he in future.

Hit finished reading and got a blank page…<p>Was there an ad or something?

400ish wpm with normal text, 0wpm with &quot;Bionic Reading&quot; wibbly wobbly fonts. It just doesn&#x27;t look like text.

This is really cool