Eye movement characteristics, cognitive characteristics and neural mechanisms of speed reading

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1042.2025.1358

Abstract

Abstract: In the process of reading, the reader needs to understand the literal meaning of the text, combine the preceding and subsequent texts with the reader's knowledge and experience, and establish a coherent mental representation through reasoning (Cai & Liao, 2024; Silawi et al., 2020). The cognitive process of adult readers is basically the same, but there are individual differences in the speed of text information extraction. According to the speed, reading can be divided into slow reading, normal reading and speed reading. speed reading is a kind of reading that is much faster than usual. It is a kind of reading method that readers can understand more reading materials in a short time (Rayner et al., 2016). Speed-reading requires readers to not only have a fast reading Speed, but also ensure the accurate understanding of the reading content, which is limited by speed-accuracy Tradeoff (SAT).
In this review, it is found that when reading fast, the reading speed is accelerated, the cognitive processing time is shortened, and the cognitive activity of readers is adjusted to grasp the main idea of the text and ignore the details. In order to improve the reading speed, reader will not deeply process the text, do not do the logical exploration of the text information, and do not do the deep integration processing. The above changes in cognitive processes were also supported by changes in eye movement processes. Speed reading is no longer word-by-word like natural reading, but whole sentences and even whole paragraphs. The above changes in eye movement behavior also correspond to changes in the cognitive process of speed reading. Among them, the fixation time is shortened, only the gist of the text can be grasped, and the details are ignored. However, the saccadic distance is enlarged, the fixation times are reduced, the text cannot be deeply processed, and the text information cannot be logically explored; The number of regression is reduced, which is not conducive to deep integration processing. Studies on the brain mechanism of speed reading have found that speed reading involves dynamic connections of multiple brain regions (Lee & Stoodley, 2024). With the acceleration of reading speed, there were significant changes in the occipital and temporal lobes, indicating that there were functional connections between the occipital and temporal brain regions. The changes in reading speed mainly changed the connections of the brain regions in the left hemisphere.
In short, rapid reading focuses on mastering the main idea of the text, but ignores the details. It is difficult to explore the logic between the previous and later information too much, and it is difficult to carry out in-depth integrated analysis. From the eye movement process, the fixation time is shortened, the fixation frequency is reduced, the fixation range is expanded, and the regression is reduced. The realization of speed reading mainly depends on the activity of the occipitotemporal region, some regions have increased activation inhibition, and some network connections are enhanced. The problems to be solved in the future are as follows: (1) The essence of the relationship between the realization of speed reading and the change of external eye movement behavior and internal cognitive process; (2) The relationship and mechanism between internal speech reduction and overall perception; (3) Explore the neural network related to speed reading; (4) The influence of reading materials and question setting in the speed reading experiment.

Key words: speed reading, context comprehension, reading comprehension, neural activity

CLC Number:

B842

SUI Xue, AN Yusi, XU Yinan, LI Yutong. Eye movement characteristics, cognitive characteristics and neural mechanisms of speed reading[J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2025, 33(8): 1358-1366.

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