Figure 1.
Diagram of a test session in Studies 1 and 2.
Japanese sentences shown here, i.e., part of the well-known novel Hashire Melos [Run, Melos!], are the samples used for the instruction. At the beginning fixation stage, participants were allowed to take sufficient time before starting each test session.
Figure 2.
Results of Study 1: reading speed in the characters read per minute and comprehension scores, percentage of correct answers to the questions, by the 14 normal participants (“untrained participants”) and three trainees of the speed-reading method (“trainees”).
Each dot shows data obtained from each reading session. The dashed line indicates the averaged comprehension score by no-reading control participants who gave answers to questions without reading the novels.
Table 1.
Summary of reading speed, comprehension scores, and eye-movement measures for both the untrained participants and the trainees in Studies 1 and 2.
Table 2.
Results of Study 1.
Figure 3.
Results of Study 2: reading speed in the characters read per minute and comprehension scores, i.e., percentage of correct answers to the questions, by the untrained participants and the trained individual (FT). Data for FT are enclosed by an ellipse.
Each dot shows data obtained from each reading session. The dashed line indicates the averaged comprehension score by no-reading control participants, who gave answers to questions without reading the novels. The long dashed dotted line indicates the averaged comprehension score by FT’s-speed control participants, who answered questions after having page displays switched in the same presentation times as FT.
Figure 4.
Heat maps showing typical distributions of fixation times in Study 2.
Fixation times for each area of the sentence display are shown in different colors. Each figure shows data for the representative test session using Story 1, (A): trained individual (FT) and (B): an untrained participant (female, 19 years). The figures were drawn using the Tobii Studio software (ver. 1.7.3).
Figure 5.
Proportion of fixation times at each of the sentence areas for the trained individual (FT) and the untrained participants in Study 2.
Shown are the data averaged across stories and then across participants for the untrained. The sentence area was divided into subareas of every 2 cm for the horizontal (X1–X10; [A]) and vertical (Y1–Y7; [B]) axes, respectively. Dashed lines show the proportions expected by the chance level (i.e., 1/10 for [A] and 1/7 for [B]). Error bars indicate standard errors of the mean.