Anyone tried the new Spritz reading method/apps?

[berkeman]

Anyone tried the new "Spritz" reading method/apps?

Looks to be an interesting idea. Words are flashed in the same spot on the screen in succession, instead of you having to scan across the line to read. Has anybody tried this? I'd like to find a demo to see what it is like...

PC World Article -- http://www.pcworld.com/article/2105960/spritz-text-streaming-app-increases-reading-speed.html

Spritz Company Website -- http://www.spritzinc.com/the-science/

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[berkeman]

Found the demo -- click the button in the upper right of this page: http://www.spritzinc.com/about/

Interesting!

 

[Jilang]

It's great! But when are you supposed to blink?

 

[berkeman]

It's great! But when are you supposed to blink?

LOL. They do seem to pause for an extra beat after every sentence, so that's at least one time you could blink. There probably are some tricks to getting the most out of it...

 

[Borek]

I have seen demo, but I have not checked if I can read this way.

I have my doubts - I am used to seeing the whole phrase/statement and getting the meaning of it in one step, not by combining separated words. But then I am an old dog, so acquiring new tricks is not as easy as it was.

 

[DavidSnider]

I've used this. For reading articles or novels or anything that doesn't require any deep thought it works really well. But for studying it's probably not very good.

 

[lisab]

I haven't seen this before. I really like it! Showed it to some coworkers, they thought it was cool too .

 

[berkeman]

I have seen demo, but I have not checked if I can read this way.

I have my doubts - I am used to seeing the whole phrase/statement and getting the meaning of it in one step, not by combining separated words. But then I am an old dog, so acquiring new tricks is not as easy as it was.

I need to play with it more, but I think I'd prefer if there were a greyed-out version of the full text paragraph in the background in smaller text, and the zoomed-in current word in the middle of the screen over the top of the greyed background. That way you would still have situational awareness of where you were on the page and paragraph, but could have any advantages of the middle-screen word-at-a-time playback.

 

[edward]

Did anyone try reading at the different speeds? Can it repeat a sentence? I have a headache now.

 

[edward]

Will we have the Spritz singing method?? I liked the old way better.

 

[Curious3141]

The default reading speed was too low. I had to set it to 400wpm before it became comfortable. Yet, I actually finished reading the article the 'usual' way before I could finish 'Spritz'ing it.

After all that, the only thing I left with was...

...how much Frank looks like a younger John Kerry.

 

[AlephZero]

I am used to seeing the whole phrase/statement and getting the meaning of it in one step, not by combining separated words.

I haven't played with the demo yet, but the idea doesn't make much sense to me. But then I'm quite happy reading music scores, where for a big orchestra score the page size might be A3 or 17x11 in, you have to take in the complete vertical extent of the page at once, and in "real time" you might be reading 3 or 4 pages a minute. (Not to mention simultaneously "re-formatting" all that visual information in real time into something that you can play with two hands on a keyboard, for the benefit of people who can't "hear the music" just by looking at the score.)

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I used to use software like this on my laptop. A started out at 700wpm and eventually got up to 1200. Problem was the technique wasn't very transferable and I didn't notice a measureable increase in reading normal texts.

 

[Jilang]

I'm trying to blink at the end of each sentence and also trying to blink one eye at a time so I don't miss the first word of the next sentence. Feels a bit odd though!

 

[Tosh5457]

Hum I read much faster the usual way, with Spritz 600wpm is already too fast and it doesn't get near my usual reading speed. Still fun and innovative for sure