Assessment of stimuli for supporting speed reading on electronic devices

Abstract

Technology has introduced multimedia to tailor information more broadly to our various senses, but by no means has the ability to consume information through reading lost its importance. To cope with the ever-growing amount of textual information to consume, different techniques have been proposed to increase reading efficiency: rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) has been suggested to increase reading speed by effectively reducing the number of eye movements. Further, moving a pen, finger or the entire hand across text is a common technique among speed readers to help guide eye movements. We adopted these techniques for electronic devices by introducing stimuli on text that guide users' eye movements. In a series of two user studies we sped up users' reading speed to 150% of their normal rate and evaluated effects on text comprehension, mental load, eye movements and subjective perception. Results show that reading speed can be effectively increased by using such stimuli while keeping comprehension rates nearly stable. We observed initial strain on mental load which significantly decreased after a short while. Subjective feedback conveys that kinetic stimuli are better suited for long, complex text on larger displays, whereas RSVP was preferred for short text on small displays.

So Much to Read, So Little Time

“…As of the writing of this article, we are familiar with only two published studies that directly compared traditional reading to reading with (an approximation of) Spritz (Benedetto et al, 2015; Dingler, Shirazi, Kunze, & Schmidt, 2015). Only one of these studies objectively compared comprehension in RSVP reading and conventional reading (Benedetto et al, 2015).…”

Profil penelitian keterampilan membaca cepat pada jurnal pendidikan bahasa dan sastra Indonesia dalam PPJB-SIP

“…Instrumen dalam bentuk tes yang digunakan untuk menelaah keterampilan membaca cepat berfungsi untuk mengukur kecepatan membaca dan memahami teks bacaan (Acklin & Papesh, 2017;Rayner, Schotter, Masson, Potter, & Treiman, 2016) yang dikuasai oleh subjek penelitian. Selain itu, instrumen dalam bentuk tes juga dianggap sebagai salah satu alat pengumpulan data yang paling objektif (Ahn, Legge, & Luebker, 1995;Calef, Pieper, & Coffey, 1999) dibandingkan dengan instrumen pengumpulan data lainnya seperti lembar observasi, lembar kuesioner maupun lembar wawancara (Dingler, Shirazi, Kunze, & Schmidt, 2015;Yen, 2012).…”

Text Priming - Effects of Text Visualizations on Readers Prior to Reading

“…Also, real-time assessments of user states regarding visual fatigue and engagement can help adjusting visualizations to match users' cognitive capacities better [27], e.g., creating more complex visualizations when readers are engaged vs. simplifying content when they are fatigued. Based on such internal user states, a dynamic reading interface could further be instructed by the system to guide the reader quicker through the essential parts of a text [16].…”