Scientists Offer New Way to Read Online Text

[sammykrupa]

Must-read article on /.:

http://science.slashdot.org/science/...1/148220.shtml

Make sure to check out the samples.

[kovidgoyal]

I have to say I like the fact that with block text you can read multiple lines at once. Reading is much faster that way.

[nekokami]

I liked the description of "Rubish" in the slashdot discussion.

The debates that rage on the source article page (http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/li...ne/#more-10459) were interesting, too.

I was initially highly skeptical of this research. The sample provided in the venturebeat article was skewed in a fairly obvious manner. I decided to look iinto this a bit more. Here's the actual study report: http://www.readingonline.org/article...cles/r_walker/

The research seems reasonably well designed (I'm doing graduate work in educational research, so I have some basis for comparison). The sample sizes are small (about 50 students in each of two studies), as is typical of educational research, so I think more follow-up is needed. I was unsure of their conclusions, however. The researchers seem to imply that there would be a benefit to reformatting all texts this way (a position which is in their financial interests to hold). On the other hand, I suspect that a longer term study might show that there is a maximum amount of advantage to be gained from this presentation method, after which a return to block formatting might be beneficial. The presentation format makes readers much more aware of syntactic structures in written material. Since grammar is barely taught in schools currently, this is an advantage. However, once the students have internalized the grammatical rules exposed by VSTF, they may not need the method anymore, and in fact, it might prove to be less efficient than block text, which allows the use of speed reading techniques that require the visibility of larger quantities of text at once.

The research article concludes with a link to a web-based service that reformats text to VSTF: http://www.liveink.com/LiveInkToGoReadingOnline.htm I wanted to try this with my older daughter, who was adopted from China when she was 11 years old and is now 16. I thought it would be interesting to get her opinion of whether VSTF made text easier to read. Unfortunately, the server seems to be presently overloaded (possibly due to the slashdot notoriety). I will try to remember to follow up on this in a few days, when the furor has died down a bit.

[Azayzel]

Interesting read, though the analogy of seeing things through a straw should be taken a step further; the reason we see thus is so that we can ingest large everything going on around us without having to individually look at each item to sense "danger." While their research may indicate the sample body of students were able to better understand what they read, they are forgetting a whole other concept... speed reading. Sure, if I want to really get the gist of things I will slow down and carefully ingest what I'm reading; however, if I want to rapidly assimilate what I'm reading and only grab the meaty portions, I will scan the the pages and absorb what I can in a much quicker manner.

I think a while back there was a contraption that enabled people to read faster by streaming the text across the screen in a single line at a set speed. Supposedly people could read faster and have a better understanding of what they read. I forget what it was called or where I saw it advertised, but it was at least 3 years ago. hmph...