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The talk of subvocalizing reminds me of few articles in some of the ebook related blogs I read. Probably 4 or 5 months ago. The first article was about the "fact" that reading was always aloud until sometime in 2nd millennium. That reading without speaking the words aloud was unheard of.
The articles that followed questioned this, pointing out references in earlier books, I think all the way back to Socrates era, although I'm not certain of that, that mentioned walking into a room to find someone staring silently at a book and not speaking and wondering what was happening. This sort of thing was offered as proof that silent reading always happened but, to me, it seemed to only prove that it was uncommon and unexpected.
I read this long enough ago that I don't remember a lot of detail or have any links, but I thought it might be interesting in reference to this conversation.
I think I also remember some speculation that silent reading began with the invention of spaces between words which I seem to recall, happened in the 13th or 14th century. I'm not sure I'm right about that.
I do remember googling and finding a lot of stuff on the web about this, much of it skeptical and much from what seemed to be reliable sources.
Barry
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