Speed reading glossary
Short, plain-language definitions of the terms used in speed reading and eye-movement research.
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22 terms, in alphabetical order. Where a concept appears in Tachi, the entry says how. For the reasoning behind the drills, see How Tachi works.
- Bionic reading
- Bionic reading is a way of formatting text in which the first few letters of every word are set in bold, with the intention of giving the eye a fixed anchor in each word. It is a typographic style rather than a reading technique. A controlled experiment (Snell, 2024) found no difference in reading time between bionic and normal text.
- In Tachi: Bionic is one of the six reader modes; it bolds roughly the first half of each word.
- Chunking
- Chunking means taking in several words as one unit instead of one word at a time, for example reading "in the morning" as a single phrase. In RSVP readers, the chunk size is the number of words displayed together. Larger chunks lower the number of screen changes per minute but ask the reader to recognise more text in each one.
- In Tachi: The reader shows 1 to 7 words per chunk. Smart chunking limits a chunk by character count so long words are not crowded.
- Comprehension
- Comprehension is how well a reader understands and can use what they have read, from recalling facts to following an argument and drawing inferences. It is the other half of any reading-speed figure: a words-per-minute number says little unless comprehension is measured too. Research consistently finds that pushing speed well beyond a reader's normal pace lowers comprehension.
- Fixation
- A fixation is a brief pause of the eyes on one point of the text, during which visual information is actually taken in. In skilled silent reading, fixations typically last about 200 to 250 milliseconds, with longer pauses on rare, long or unexpected words. Reading consists of a chain of fixations joined by rapid jumps called saccades.
- Fovea
- Also called: Foveal vision
- The fovea is the small central area of the retina that provides the sharpest vision. It covers only about two degrees of the visual field, roughly the width of a thumbnail held at arm's length, which is why only a few letters around the point of gaze are seen in full detail and the eyes must keep moving during reading.
- Optimal recognition point (ORP)
- Also called: ORP, Optimal viewing position, Pivot letter
- The optimal recognition point is the letter in a word where the eye should land for the word to be recognised fastest, usually slightly left of the word's centre in left-to-right scripts. RSVP readers often align every word on this letter and colour it, so the eye can stay on one spot while the words change.
- In Tachi: In Flash mode with one word per chunk, the reader colours the letter at the optimal recognition point.
- Pacer
- A pacer is a moving guide that sets the tempo of reading and that the eyes follow along the line. Traditionally it is a finger, pen or card slid under the text; in software it is a highlight or underline that advances at a chosen speed. A pacer keeps the pace steady and discourages drifting and unnecessary re-reading.
- In Tachi: Pacer is one of the reader's two full-text modes: it underlines the current chunk and dims the text around it.
- Perceptual span
- Also called: Visual span, Useful field of view
- The perceptual span is the region of text from which a reader picks up useful information during a single fixation. For readers of English it extends about three to four letters to the left of the fixation point and up to about fourteen or fifteen letters to the right, though words can only be identified in a narrower zone near the centre.
- Peripheral vision
- Peripheral vision is everything seen outside the centre of gaze. Its resolution falls off quickly with distance from the fixation point, so it is good at detecting position, movement and rough shape but poor at fine detail such as letters. In reading it mainly helps the eyes choose where to land next rather than identifying distant words.
- In Tachi: The Schulte Table and Peripheral Letters drills ask you to notice items away from the point you are looking at.
- Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP)
- Also called: RSVP
- Rapid serial visual presentation is a method of showing text one word, or one short group of words, at a time in the same place on the screen at a controlled rate. Because the text comes to the eye, the reader makes almost no eye movements. RSVP was developed for laboratory research and is the display method behind most speed-reading apps.
- In Tachi: Tachi's reader is an RSVP reader with a range of 100 to 1000 words per minute.
- Regression
- A regression is an eye movement backwards in the text to look again at something already passed. Roughly ten to fifteen percent of a skilled reader's eye movements are regressions. Many are short corrections, while longer ones usually happen when a sentence was misunderstood. Regressions support comprehension, so removing them entirely is not a sensible goal.
- Return sweep
- A return sweep is the long eye movement from the end of one line of text to the beginning of the next. Return sweeps often land a little short of the line start and are followed by a small corrective movement. Line length and line spacing affect how accurate they are, which is one reason very wide text columns are tiring to read.
- Saccade
- A saccade is a rapid jump of the eyes from one fixation to the next. In reading English a typical saccade covers about seven to nine letter spaces and lasts a few hundredths of a second. Vision is largely suppressed while the eyes are in flight, so no new text is taken in during a saccade.
- Scanning
- Scanning is searching a text for a specific item, such as a name, a number or a keyword, without reading the rest. The reader holds the target in mind and sweeps the page until something matches. It is much faster than normal reading because most words are rejected by their shape without being understood.
- In Tachi: The Text Scan drill has you tap every occurrence of a target word in a passage before time runs out.
- Schulte table
- A Schulte table is a square grid, classically five by five, filled with numbers in random order. The task is to find the numbers in ascending sequence as quickly as possible, ideally while keeping the gaze on the centre cell. It was devised as a test of attention and visual search and is named after the German psychiatrist Walter Schulte.
- In Tachi: The Schulte Table drill offers 3×3, 4×4 and 5×5 grids and records your best time for each.
- Skimming
- Skimming is reading selectively to get the gist of a text: looking at headings, opening sentences and key terms while skipping detail. It trades completeness for time and works best when the reader already knows the subject. Research suggests that many apparent feats of speed reading are in fact skilled skimming.
- Smooth pursuit
- Smooth pursuit is the slow, continuous eye movement used to follow a moving object, such as a bird in flight or a dot moving across a screen. It is controlled differently from saccades and cannot normally be produced without a moving target. Ordinary reading uses saccades and fixations, not smooth pursuit.
- In Tachi: The Circular Eye Motion drill is a smooth-pursuit exercise: you follow a dot around a circle.
- Speed reading
- Speed reading is an umbrella term for methods that aim to increase reading rate, including RSVP displays, pacers, phrase reading, reducing re-reading, and skimming. The evidence for these methods varies. Reviews of the research conclude that large gains in speed come with a loss of comprehension, and that vocabulary, knowledge and reading practice matter most.
- Subvocalization
- Also called: Inner speech, Silent speech
- Subvocalization is the inner voice that sounds out words during silent reading, sometimes with faint activity in the speech muscles. Speed-reading courses often tell readers to suppress it. Reading research indicates that inner speech helps with comprehension and memory, particularly for difficult text, and that eliminating it is neither realistic nor useful.
- Tachistoscope
- A tachistoscope is an instrument that displays a visual stimulus, such as a word, number or picture, for a very short and exactly controlled time. Originally mechanical and later electronic, it has been used since the nineteenth century in research on perception and attention, and in training people to recognise words and shapes at a glance.
- In Tachi: The Tachistoscope drill flashes a word for 200 down to 5 milliseconds across ten levels and asks you to type it.
- Transfer of training
- Also called: Transfer
- Transfer of training is the extent to which practising one task improves performance on a different one. Getting faster at a drill is expected; what matters is whether that gain carries over to real reading. For most eye and perception exercises, convincing evidence of transfer to everyday reading speed has not been established.
- Words per minute (WPM)
- Also called: WPM, Reading rate
- Words per minute is the standard measure of reading rate: the number of words read divided by the minutes taken. A meta-analysis (Brysbaert, 2019) estimates average adult silent reading in English at about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. A rate is only meaningful alongside a measure of comprehension.
- In Tachi: The reader's speed is set in WPM, from 100 to 1000 in steps of 25.
Sources
- Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4–34.
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
- Snell, J. (2024). No, Bionic Reading does not work. Acta Psychologica, 247, 104304.