Research: The Eyes Have It (1)
"Genius... is the capacity to see ten things when the ordinary man sees one, and where the man of talent sees two or
three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art."
Several important areas of experimental cognitive psychology are raised in this section regarding Range Reading.
First,Buzan is emphasizing that we need to learn to take in groups of words or chunks of material by increasing the use of peripheral vision.
A number of studies have investigated the amount of information that enters our information processing systems.
A second major point refers to the common practice of back skipping and how this relates to the amount of time spent processing redundant information.
A third major point relates so speed reading and its increasing comprehension.
Anderson (1985) reports that when we first focus on a stimulus, the information enters an iconic memory storage system, from
which it quickly fades and, if not entered into short term memory, is lost.
A number of studies have attempted to investigate the capacity of
this system. Early studies utilised the "whole report method" whereby a
number of items were briefly flashed (50 msec) to a subject's visual
field and the subject was required to recall as many items as possible.
Reports showed that when an array of 12 letters was flashed, subjects
could recall at most 4, 5 or 6 of the letters.
Sperling (1960) further investigated the capacity of
this system by changing the methodology employed in the studies. He
presented three rows of four letters each to the subject. However, after
the array disappeared from view, he used a tone to indicate which row
was to be recalled. For example, a high tone meant that the subject
should recall the top line, a low tone meant the bottom line, and an
intermediate tone meant the middle line.
This method was referred to as the "partial-report method". He found that, on the average, subjects
could report 3 of the 4 letters in each row required. Since the subjects
did not know in advance which line they would be required to recall, Sperling estimated that they had 3 letters available for recall, or 9
items, a significant increase over the 5 or 6 recalled in the
"whole-report method".
These results indicate that we have much more information that enters our systems than we are able to recall. It is
also probable that this information will be processed at some level.
This finding may be taken as indirect evidence supporting Buzan's
suggestion that we learn to speed read by, in part, increasing the use
of our peripheral vision.
As demonstrated by the Sperling study, much
more information enters our systems than simply the stimuli on which we
are directly focusing.
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