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Regarding pitch: I don't know about other TTS engines but with the Ivona engine which I am using on my phone I find that leaving it the default value works best. For what it's worth the Ivona engine speeds up without changing in pitch at all, so that might be the reason. It doesn't sound like a squirrel voice.
Regarding the scientific rigorousness of my anecdote: it has none but it doesn't claim to so thats kind of a moot point. This wasn't a scientific experiment in the sense that I have enough evidence to publish this as a paper in a Neuroscience journal. I'd need a statistically relevant sample size to even try to do that. Measuring IQ tests before and after wouldn't prove that this was caused by this in particular, by reading in general, by some other change I've made in my life, etc. It would show a correlation, but not a causation.
So at this point it's just this amazing subjective experience I'm hoping will encourage others to give this a try and see for themselves. If enough do, and the effect is as dramatic as I suspect it is then eventually the neuroscientists can look into this and perhaps prove and quantify the effect.
Again, I'm not trying to make the case that I have proven the effect exists myself. I strongly suspect it does based on my subjective experience and what I've since learned about neuroscience on how it might work but that's just a hypothesis and I might be fooling myself. I'm convinced but I understand why others that haven't experienced this for themselves would be skeptical because if the situation was reversed that's how I would feel.
The interesting thing is that this could definitely be tested scientifically. Especially if you go beyond statistical tools that can only show correlation, never prove causation, and actually look at what is happening in the brain to dramatically speed up language comprehension.
Note that tere is research to suggest that language plays a critical role in the development of intelligence though. Especially at an early age where small differences could eventually snowball into large differences in adulthood. Google "reading comprehension and intelligence".
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