Alternate phrasing: Do you hear a voice in your head when you read?
Sorry if this is the wrong sub to put this in, but I'd thought I'd give it a shot. I read a lot (duh I'm in r/books), and a lot of people assume I'm a fast reader because I read so much, but I'm actually a really slow reader and pretty self-conscious about it since I do it so much. My friend told me it takes him around 2 hours to read 100 pages, and I did some rough timing (I'm reading A Game of Thrones right now) and it takes me a about a minute and a half to two minutes to get through ONE page. Onto the title of my post, I've sought to remedy this by trying to improve my read speed and not subvocalize as much, but I really struggle to do it for more than a paragraph or two before I need to slow down and really process what I'm reading, not only for comprehension but for enjoyment. Only, at the speed I'm going right now I'm never going to be able read all the books I want to because I'm too slow. I've been talking to another friend about this and he says he doesn't read every word in the book, which I thought nuts, but now I'm beginning to see why. Can someone please help? Thank you.
should I only subvocalize keywords? its easier than reducing subvocalization.
Personally I usually subvocalize Mandarin pronunciation just because that's the Sinitic variety I'm most familiar with (and what most textbooks of Classical Chinese for English speakers use) or try to use Japanese kanbun kundoku which I'm not very good at yet (any advice on how to learn it effectively would be appreciated) but I also learned the Heart Sutra in go'on because that's what they chant it in. What about you guys?
I specifically ask about thinking in language because I know some ppl think more - naturally predominantly - visually.
I've tried to pick up speed reading in the last few days, so in turn I tried to eliminate subvocalization. In doing so, I feel as if I'm not understanding what I'm reading. It's all kind of a blur in my head. Could it be that the text I'm reading is just difficult to begin with? Is this normal? Thanks
I oftentimes find myself subvocalizing thoughts, for example when I think through a problem or rehearse something in my head. Do you do this as well? I wonder how we compare to those without aphantasia in this aspect.
As a follow up question, do you subvocalize when you read? If no, did you train yourself not to and have you noticed any difference in reading comprehension? I wonder how reliant on visual imagery people without aphantasia who read without subvocalization are.
So for people who have to regularly read music, how does this skill progress? I used to be in choir, guitar ensembles, and orchestra, but I always relied on the people around me to know when to come in and follow the rhythms.
I’ve tried to learn piano and read music multiple times, but I always get to the point where I can’t play any faster than I could physically speak it and get discouraged. I don’t know how to practice from that point to get better.
Are people always counting in their heads, or does it get to the point that you can just impulsively “feel” the rhythm rather than constantly having an internal counting monologue? And if so, how do you practice that? How does the skill progress?
If I repeat to myself what the professor is uttering I tend to get less distracted. This may sound bizarre but it helps me.
I wonder if anyone else does this as well.
"Ronald Carver, author of the 1990 book The Causes of High and Low Reading Achievement, is one researcher who has done extensive testing of readers and reading speed, and thoroughly examined the various speed reading techniques and the actual improvement likely to be gained. One notable test he did pitted four groups of the fastest readers he could find against each other. The groups consisted of champion speed readers, fast college readers, successful professionals whose jobs required a lot of reading, and students who had scored highest on speed reading tests. Carver found that of his superstars, none could read faster than 600 words per minute with more than 75% retention of information."
"One of the basic goals is the elimination of subvocalization, claimed to be the thing that slows readers down the most. Subvocalization is the imagined pronunciation of every word we read. I do this a lot, and it limits my reading speed to virtually the same as my talking speed. Subvocalization is even accompanied by minute movements of the tongue and throat muscles. Nearly every speed reading class promises the elimination of subvocalization.
Here's the problem with that. You can't read without subvocalization. Carver and Rayner have both found that even the fastest readers all subvocalize. Even skimmers subvocalize key words. This is detectable, even among speed readers who think they don't do it, by the placement of electromagnetic sensors on the throat which pick up the faint nerve impulses sent to the muscles. Our brains just don't seem to be able to completely divorce reading from speaking"
Question based off of this short interview with Richard Feynman describing his thought process versus a mathematician's. TL;DR: Feynman hears himself counting and therefore cannot speak while counting, but the mathematician sees the numbers ticking away and therefore can speak, but can't read at the same time. I'm curious if there are any trends related to types.
Personally, I'm an ENFP/ENTP and I subvocalize just about everything i.e. I hear my voice in my head when I read, thinking about what to say next, thoughts in general, etc. If I'm reading, I can't hear just about anything that's going on around me because I'm listening to the book.
I am trying to train myself out of subvocalization and I have gotten to the point where I only think a few words, but if I reduce it to none I struggle to retain anything. I imagine it's because I have been repeating things to remember them my whole life, and absorbing words purely through vision is a difficult adjustment.
Readers who have overcome this hurdle, please share your thoughts and advice.
I've always hated reading subtitles because i found them distracting and annoying, and it bugged my having to randomly pause the video or be forced to go back if i thought i missed something. I could never understand people that would say "It's not that bad" until today...
Apparently some people don't have to "Subvocalize" when they read... Meaning they can read the whole sentence just by looking at it, unlike people like me, who have to read every word individually and "utter the words silently to themselves".
Can someone teach me this superpower?
Edit: Should probably mention i also have dyslexia in addition to this. Not sure if this has anything to do with it. But i saw it brought up a few times so i figured i should mention it here.
I am a beginner here and wanted to learn what do speed readers mean when they say you have to eliminate/reduce subvocalization? Do they mean to not utter it from your mouth and still do it in your head or what is it please help me out know about this Thanks!
I was just interested as to why I never learned to subvocalize as I was growing up and I was hoping you guys could either shed some insight on why I never did so or direct me to a different subreddit where I can get some answers. Some background:
English is my second language, but my parents began speaking that to me before I turned two. My first language is Chinese. I began reading (English) when I was three and a half and I was reading simple chapter books by Kindergarten, but I never said words in my head.
I'm sure that I never learned to subvocalize as I read because I remember thinking to myself how strange it was that people mouthed words while the read silently and that it was weird that others couldn't read and talk at the same time. I also remember a conversation with a friend of mine in late elementary in which she mentioned a name that I didn't recognize. It turned out that it was the name of a character from a book that we had both read, but that I never pronounced in my head. I guess I just associated the arrangement of letters with the character. I still do this now. I read at approximately 560 WPM with comprehension when I'm reading for leisure. I tend to subvocalize though when reading dense material or learning from a textbook.
A while back I thought the reason I might not subvocalize was because I had learned to read Chinese characters where, essentially, a symbol that cannot be pronounced phonetically stands for a word or a phrase and that maybe I had transfered that over to English in the way that I would just see a word on paper as an idea rather than an actual word. But then I thought about it more as I was typing this and I'm pretty sure I hadn't learned to read Chinese before I turned two.
Does anybody have any ideas on why I learned to read this way? How unique is my situation?
EDIT: I don't know if this is relevant, but I usually find any given text to be more difficult to comprehend when I'm reading out loud than the text would be to comprehend if I were reading silently without subvocalizing.
Had a question and thought the tims here could help me. I subvocalize when i read. Always have. Except, when I'm watching something with subtitles, i dont at all. I think i used to? I'm not sure, but i know i don't now. I'll be so tricked into thinking I'm just listening to the voice actor saying the lines I'm reading that I'll look away from the screen, only to realize after i no longer know what they're saying.
Anyway, any other tims have situations where they subvocalize, and others where they dont?
Recently while getting back into reading , I've noticed that I no longer subvocalize or at least hear the words clearly in my head compared to when I was younger as a kid or teenager. This is a problem for me because subvocalizing for me allowed for better comprehension and immersion into whatever book I was reading. For me subvocalization helped a lot, I was in several spelling bee's growing up and many times I recognized how to spell the words because I read them previously or I knew how to sound them out in my head well. Now I can't clearly subvocalize in my mind to do this anymore. I feel the lack of subvocalizing clearly, has impacted my memory. (Also when I refer to subvocalization I mean reading inwardly without movement of lips)
I'm not sure if the problem is due to usage of internet , to much skimming , or because I use to force myself to read faster in college. Either way it would mean a lot , if you guys could share some tips on gaining the ability on HOW to subvocalize or read better silently/internally . There's so much out there on how to eliminate subvocalization but not how to actually improve or do it.
Huh, miss? Hum is hummus.
So I fell behind on H.I. and missed the debates, but Grey flipping out about imagination and subvocalization and whether or not we're just using different language for the same phenomena... I've got some input.
When I was a teenager I had mild to moderate narcolepsy, which resolved into hypersomnia as an adult. For those who don't know - or who think they know but are probably wrong because they learned everything from the movies - narcolepsy is a more complicated condition than just passing out or falling asleep all of the time. It is in fact a neurological condition (theorized but not 100% confirmed to be autoimmune in nature) that results in someone dreaming too much. Dream sleep is not restful sleep however, so at my worst I was sleeping for 9-14hrs a day and feeling I hadn't slept at all.
Because the narcoleptic is perpetually tired, they can easily fall asleep. This falling asleep even comes in various flavours; regular albeit sudden sleep, fugue states (the mind sleeps but the body doesn't), and cataplectic seizures (the body sleeps but the mind doesn't). The fatigued narcoleptic is constantly vigilant against passing out - like a toddler who refuses to go to bed - but startling or fatiguing experiences like sudden loud noises or laughing too hard can make the narcoleptic lose their grip and then have an event. As a result of that, the narcoleptic is often in a perpetual state of hypnogogia, meaning they're experiencing features of being both awake and asleep.
The more obvious side effects of hypnogogia for me were that I can start dreaming before I fall asleep, or continue dreaming even after I wake up. I can even experience hypnogogic hallucinations while apparently awake, and this is the key.
When my narcolepsy was at its worst, I could experience waking dreams (but not quite to Muad'dib levels). I've experienced the usual hallucinations of sight and sound and touch and smell, as well as mild synesthesia. I can also say that I've experienced what can only be called "narrative hallucinations", which leads me to think that maybe storytelling is a type of sense that we've underestimated. Anyway... when I say I can imagine a thing in my mind's eye, I have experienced this both in the abstract of a clear understanding of a constructed cognitive hologram of sorts in the manner of Meinong's Jungle, and also I have "seen" the imagined object with my eyes as a hallucination which I knew not to be real but which my occipital processing probably conf
... keep reading on reddit ➡Like when the auther gives enough information on a character I will always try and mentally create a voice for them. It just makes reading awesome.
Has anyone experienced the sending of their subvocals via telepathy?
Anyone know how to turn it off?
I ruminate and rant in my head and people call me or send text to tell me if everything is ok, or they see me and they tell me what I privately ruminated.
I’ve dealt with this for a few years now, and it has interfered with my daily life as I have self sabotaged nearly everything Ive planned as people pick up my intentions and I beam out my rumination’s, I had a feeling it was my subvocals that were being transmitted, but I am not exactly sure.
Who can I consult with for help?
An MD will label me as Schizophrenic or looney I don’t want to go through the psychiatric brain wash they give you id feel invalidated.
I suffer in silence, as I can’t speak to many about this or else they will know its me, and I am not in control of what I sent out, my mind is constantly at it.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated…
Everything I've read and experienced has taught me that subvocalizing slows down reading speed so when reading for work I try not to. But it seems like not subvolcalizing also makes it very hard to appreciate prose.
Most of the comments in Sanderson's latest writing excuses podcast seemed to indicate that the authors on the podcast were definitely subvocalizing everything when they were analyzing Sanderson's short story so I started questioning whether I should subvocalize or not when I read for fun.
After listening to HI I learned that not everyone can choose subvocalize voice they hear. When I read I can choose who I want to listen to, Morgan Freedman, Alec Baldwin, The British guy from Air Crash investigation, etc. I have always played music by ear so perhaps it's a unique skill but apparently it's not common?
Hey guys,
I'm trying to learn how to read faster. I'm kinda doubtfoul about some techniques that require you to skim over lines in fractions of a second (like Ferris' from fourhourworkweek) because comprehension goes down if you do so, so my approach is to first eliminate subvocalization (saying the words in your head).
Do you have any tips on how to achieve that?
To the ones of you who unlearned subvocalization, how did you do it and what worked best for you?
Quick potential hack for any students out there! I’m a medicated adult who still had a hard time with reading comprehension and keeping my floating thoughts from taking over when doing assigned reading. I started playing around with different techniques and I found myself subvocalizing with a British accent (for fun) during the most boring bits of my textbook. To my pleasant surprise…it worked! Try it out, any accent will work. Hopefully this will make the process a little bit more fun.
To all my student adhders, hope this can bring a new & refreshing way to get through those assigned reading! Goodluck
I don't know if I'm doing this reading thing right, that's why I'm asking. This might seem obvious to some, but I'm not sure.
I’ve always heard sounds from my own body movements like I used to hold my breath a lot when I was younger bc the low humming distracted me from external sounds that bothered me. But could that just have been me subvocalizing?
There are also sounds whenever I’m doing any other movements (like waving) or watching those gifs (the abstract ones and that pylon gif even without the shake). The sound is consistent but the speed at which a thing moves dictates the rhythm and I can’t turn it off (even if I hold my breath). Could that just be me internally producing the sounds like you would when you’re reading?
I think this a result of Google autocomplete half thinking for me.
