Bershidsky calls the new speed-reading app Spritz “devilish”:
Speed-reading app developers may tell us, as the Spritz team does, that they have perfected the RSVP method to minimize eye movements and optimize the delivery of symbols to our brain. In the end, however, the written text’s only advantage over audio and video is the fact that we can switch reading “gears” as we go, skimming or scanning less interesting passages and slowing down on the more important ones. … Who wants to read Harry Potter books in an hour, anyway? They were written to be enjoyed, not swallowed.
Ian Steadman worries that for some texts, Spritz will set you back:
So let’s say you’re really into what Spritz is selling, and want to start getting through War & Peace in less time than it takes to watch a full season of Breaking Bad. The practical limitations of reading text one word at a time should be obvious: shorter words are going to be easier to understand than longer ones, and Tolstoy’s epic is going to be more taxing to grasp word-by-word than, say, Harry Potter. Anything with weird formatting, footnotes or sentences that can last longer than the length of a page – here’s looking at you, Infinite Jest – are going to be made incomprehensible with Spritz. There’s a button to go back to the start of either the paragraph or sentence that the reader is on, but for texts that require multiple passes to fully grasp (like, say, a scientific study) Spritz is going to be a hindrance, not a help.
Olga Khazan finds that, according to most research, as “speed increases, comprehension deteriorates”:
In the World Championship Speed Reading Competition, top contestants read about 1,000 to 2,000 words per minute, but they only understand about half of what they take in. One study of 16 high-performing people, including self-proclaimed “speed-readers” found that none could read faster than 600 words per minute while understanding at least three-quarters of the information.
Keith Rayner, a psycholinguist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, told me that he thinks “all speed-reading claims are nonsensical.”
Spritz’ technique, called rapid serial visual presentation, or RSVP, isn’t new, and Rayner said it causes the same comprehension problems as other strategies.
The Dish 