The Impact of Speed Reading on the Generation of Inferences

This experiment explores the effect that speed-reading has on the inferences made while reading texts. More specifically it will compare comprehension and inferences made between participants that read at a normal rate and participants that have been trained to read at a faster rate than normal. Speed-reading courses promise the ability to learn how to take in larger amounts of text and information than normal reading. However, most research has shown that while these courses increase reading speed, comprehension and retention of the material suffers a significant drop (Just, Carpenter, & Masson, 1986). Very little research has examined the effects speed-reading has on inference generation. As people read they naturally make inferences about the material they are reading. This natural tendency allows readers to connect ideas and events in a passage and fill in any missing information. In general, inferences are important for readers to understand passages and for long-term memory storage. The purpose of this experiment is to explore how speed-reading influences the generation of inferences during reading. In the experiment, subjects will read text passages which require inference generation for deep comprehension. After reading each passage, subjects will perform a lexical decision task to determine whether the inference has been generated or not. Given that speed-reading has been found to hurt comprehension, it is expected that speed-reading should also disrupt the necessary mental processes for inference generation, as measured by accuracy and reaction time on the lexical decision task