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I’ve found with this type of text that if I try to read it normally, I struggle to process the change between the start and end of each word, and read much more slowly. If I try to read quickly though, it flows, as if I’m skimming the words but still understanding them properly.
It’s a very strange feeling :)
Yeah I had a Firefox plugin earlier that turned all text to bionic, and I loved and hated it at the same time
Especially since it feels like you’re reading in 1fps. It feels like stuttering
It’s a loosening of control, I think. Let the wheel turn on its own, you’re still there to steer as needed, but let the inertia do the work. 🤓
what plugin?
I think it was bionic reader.
I don’t want to link to the plugin, since I don’t really know if it’s safe to use so evaluate yourself
Oddly enough, I find myself processing text with a regular font in both ways from time to time. Sometimes it flows like I’m reading half of the words but still absorbing every bit. Other times I notice the end of a paragraph and can’t tell you what I just read.
I can read it twice as fast and remember less than half of it.
My reading speed was never the problem. It’s the reading comprehension and memory that limits me.
Ah, the “I read three pages but my brain was thinking about bees”
God, this used to annoy me so bad. I’d read the same three paragraphs over and over again, only for my mind to wander immediately every time. I’ve since come to appreciate it though, because my mind usually wanders off to think about potential scenarios in the book I’m actively reading.
Like what two characters might say if they were to have a conversation about something specific, or even how the current situation I’m trying to read about might progress (instead of just focusing on the damn words that give me that answer, thanks brain). Time spent daydreaming about a story I enjoy isn’t time wasted IMO.
Though, it’s admittedly still very annoying when I’m trying to read something boring like a science or news article.
It’s also kind of cool how your brain can both process text and wander off.
What kind of bees?
Didn’t know these existed until yesterday one flew into my home.
It was so big I initially thought it was a hornet
Whose bees?
Yeah, wasp traps to protect bee colonies, are cool.
For me, it’s both your points as well as a matter of current distractions. The real test would be if I could read/write something like this while somebody in the room has an unrelated conversation. Will it still hold my attention without the spoken words around me distracting me? Sadly, I have my doubts.
I love this in principle but I can’t use it myself. I‘m a very fast reader by default, basically already doing what the highlighting tries to make you do, without it needing to be there. The highlighting disrupts that for me. I end up stopping at every word and partially jumping back and forth. I do show this to people on occasion that aren’t as lucky as me with their reading speed and most said it helped them. Not all though.
it slowed my reading in the same way.
Felt wierd realy, like I couldn’t read ahead while my inner voice was “saying” it.
For me, it completely messed up my whole-word and multi-word reading by shape. Like, I don’t read by syllable because I’m not pronouncing the words, I’m just reading the meaning of the whole word directly from the shape of the whole word (or several words), if that makes sense?
Like, when I’m reading, my inner monologue is only “saying” a handful of key words in each sentence, as it fluidity skips over “mentally pronouncing” all the filler/context words.
This completely breaks that. It splits each word into two chunks, neither of which is the word, so I need to show down to “mentally say” both chunks of each word to read them. Like, it’s still fast, I guess, but I’d estimate it slows me down by ⅓-½ish and disrupts my reading comprehension significantly.
I assume that if I read like that for a few hours, I’d likely get used to it, but why bother?
On the other hand, I think that could be a great reading tool, I imagine especially for people with dyslexia, but probably most fluent but slow readers.
This is the most accurate description I’ve ever seen of how I read
I’ve sort of always read that way, inner voice and all. When I learned that really fast readers figure out how to ignore that, or do it naturally, my mind was blown.
Can you expand on that? I have never been a fast reader and speed reading takes the pleasure out of it for me. So, mainly story books, I read at the same pace as a speaker might say them outloud. As if my minds voice is reading them allowed in a chair to the child me setting quietly on the ground. Speed reading feels like watching a show in fast-forward. Great for boring parts but not enjoyable to me.
How does your inner voice feel as you read?
I hate it. Made me read twice as fast and use four times as much brainpower to comprehend it.
Same, I was hoping to burn 20 seconds of my life and instead it took only 10
I read pretty fast but it takes a lot of mental energy to pay attention to every word. I could read that very fast and it cost me a very low amount of mental energy.
The reason it works is because it makes it harder for the brain.
This picture is yelling half of every word at me
Yeah, I could read it faster but it also feels like it’s messing with my eyes. I think anything of real length in this style would give me a headache.
This reads like one of my brother’s brainrot videos being read by an AI.
This “tech” has been out for a while but I don’t know that we can easily get it on our phones and computers for general reading :(.
Anyone know?
There’s a bionic reader extension for Firefox that works on mobile, but obvs that only works on webpages
Most such phone apps should be web pages, and the good ones usually have a web-page version.
I don’t know specifically of any piece of tech that does this, but it would be very very easy to code as a plugin for a book reader app or something like that. It’d be more difficult to do well in more complicated text or mixed media, like spreadsheets, PDFs, or browser pages, since you probably don’t want every piece of text on the page to have the effect.
Librera on fdroid also has this feature (but not referred to as “bionic”)
Settings > Advanced Settings > Highlighting Initial Letters
10’s era WAOW!!! posting still survives!
It’s actually because english is very redundant. Its a legibility thing.
This is absolutely gibberish. I have to solve a puzzle for every word. Yes, I can read it. The puzzles are compelling. I must solve each one even though i know what it is going to try and tell me. No, I cannot just read this.
Opposite effect for me. I read that much slower than my normal speed
Works for me, but triggers an uncanny-valley/discomfort effect whict Sprint Reader doesn’t.
Book’s Story e-reader supports this by the way:
Plug in your phone, you’re at 1%’!
If only it was bold :(
Wow, thanks I was looking for a replacement to ReadEra, I didn’t find this with F-Droid’s search
I kinda like ReadEra (premium)…
I use OpenDyslexic font, and let the text-to-speech help to keep me tracking.
Same! Awesome.
I’m skeptical about how much the bolding makes people read faster vs placebo of just telling people they should be reading faster. Also as other people stated, comprehension is what counts.
What about this is “bionic”? And what part of the brain is the “brain center”?
What about this is “bionic”?
Try reading with this:
This really doesn’t feel like an ADHD exclusive thing.
I don’t think it’s supposed to be. I think it’s just supposed to be easier for people who don’t have the ADHD that lets them read a book cover to cover while calling deep vein thrombosis a punk ass bitch who wouldn’t dare
I’m not ADHD, but that particular passage using that particular font and those particular colors seemed to speed up my ability to read the text. But when Staments posted below (https://lemmy.zip/post/45655234/20636698) using what looks like the same methodology, it ended up being an impediment. I struggled to even get through the first sentence.
So I have to wonder if there’s more to it than just randomly putting a character or few in bold at the start of each word – like maybe it’s also highly dependent on things like the font being use and making sure to use specific words and phrases that are conducive to this technique.
To be fair, when I open that link, I get light gray text on a dark brown-or-yellow-greyish background which isn’t that easily readable for me - at least contrast wise.
