(no subject)

[moominmolly]

When you read a book -- when you get into the reading groove, that is -- how do you absorb the individual words? Do you start at the beginning and go to the end? Do you recognize the letters as a group? Do you recognize the shape of the word, or word sets? Something else entirely? Is this something you can even SEE in yourself?

In general, I think of my brain as working very much like my brother Paul's, but in this case, we've never really lined up, so I'm curious how the rest of the world works. I sort of have a pathological relationship to letters, so I'm not very objective.

EDIT: when people speak, I see the letters pass through my brain.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It depends how well I know the language. For those I read well--English and German--I can rely on gestalt processing and only need to look at the individual letters when that fails (such as when I encountre a new word). With languages I don't know as well, the number of "new words" is much higher and I tend to have to go at least syllable-by-syllable if not word-by-word.

[redbear07.livejournal.com]

I stop being aware of reading. Its like watching a movie in my minds eye. Or listening to a really lecture in college.

[fanw.livejournal.com]

For a long time I "heard" reading. I'd read at the pace of someone speaking, I think the result of years of being read to. Now I just race through and I don't really notice the words. The concepts just slip in there willy-nilly.

[arachne8x.livejournal.com]

I think I read based on patterns, and only see the individual letters when the word isn't recognized immediately, in that case I go from beginning to end.

[inthatoneway.livejournal.com]

I know that when I'm reading a story with names I recognize the names more as shapes and patterns. If it's not a common name I often find myself unable to tell someone what the name is; I don't actually parse it into phonemes, it's just a recognizable shape to me. I'm pretty sure I do the same with most words in general. I soak in just enough of the letters, taken as a group, to identify the word and that's it. I also suspect that I do much the same thing on the sentence level. If the context of a sentence is clear the end is sometimes predictable, and so I just sort of glance at it to confirm that my prediction is correct. I'm pretty sure I do this because I sometimes catch myself reading things that suddenly don't make sense, and I have to go back a few sentences to find out where I got off track. I can often track the disconnect to a single word that resembles another word visually. For example, the end of your post read as "we've never really LIVED up" the first time I read it, because for some reason that made more sense to me.

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

There are eye tracking studies on reading. They found that people's eyes tend to jump around that page rather than going word by word linearly, and the eyes will stay longer in some places than others.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure I recognize whole words or phrases. I often "hear" words in my head, something I remember teaching myself to do when I was little (although separately from learning to read), but still read much faster than someone could read the text aloud.

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

I definitely do what inthatoneway does with names, especially when they're exotic names that I wouldn't have the first clue how to pronounce (which, when you primarily read science fiction and fantasy, happens a lot ;-).

I read fast enough that I think I might be doing the "whole word" thing that is pointed to by the research on the subject. But on the other hand, I seem to be much more likely to catch typos than most people, and I rarely read one word for another, so on some level I'm paying significant attention to the individual letters.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

there are canonical studies of this (and some variations, some of which lead to dyslexia) but i'll leave the pubmed search for you :)

i also see letters in my brain when people speak. punctuation too, sometimes.

[veek.livejournal.com]

It totally depends on what I'm reading and how tired/distracted I am while reading it. Generally I "hear" the voice of the author in my head, even if the author is unknown or a group (encyclopedia entries, frex). But it's not at the speaking speed, it's faster. Usually.

[moonshadow.livejournal.com]

I think that for the most part I recognize words by their shapes and first letters. I say this mostly because of my patterns of MISreading.

An exception - if someone read me something out loud, I often hear it in their voice when I'm re-reading.

[twoeleven.livejournal.com]

i hear the words, with no conscious perception of the mechanics of reading. i could just as well be listening to somebody talking very quickly.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I'm answering before I read other people's comments.

Reading to me is primarily about sound, not appearance. When I start a book (or I realize that I've lost track of what's going on while reading on the bus and I have to focus again) I hear each word in my head.

When I'm reading messages from my friends (like this LJ, or email or IMs) I continue to read at that speed and for the most part I hear the words in their voice, or at least in their cadence.

After a page or two I devour entire sentences at once. Then they make a picture directly in my head and the words are incidental. Keep in mind that I read fiction at a rate of 120 pages an hour.

I don't think this actually answers your question, though. I'll read other answers and see if I can think of it from a different perspective.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I'm generally not conscious of how I read or - I think - of individual words. Judging by my reactions when I read something difficult (legal cases), I skim and skip a lot. This doesn't matter when I'm reading SF but matters a lot when I need to read something closely. Most people consider me a fast reader (probably not in this crowd) and I do notice typos and wrong words when I read.

It's been forever since someone read to me and very few movies track the book closely. One that does is The Princess Bride; I hear actors' voices a lot when I reread that book. Ditto Shakespeare and, sometimes, Austen et al.

[bluepapercup]

I mostly just absorb sentences wholesale and then my mind extracts the concepts.

What I do perceive that's sort of sometimes distracting but generally useful and pleasant is that words, to me, are shaped like the thing they are describing. For example, the word dog looks like a little dog. Abstract words do this too, but sometimes in misleading ways, as a word will occassionally look "positive" but have a negative definition.

When people are speaking I don't see words or letters. Mostly I watch their face, I sometimes notice the words come out of their mouth and it weirds me out.

PS - Mr. Ben, who was homeschooled and taught himself to read and write, sounds the words out in his head as he read, as if he was reading the book out loud to himself. This causes problems, as I read quite fast, and he reads slowly. We appear to absorb approximately the same amount of content, though we usually come away with different details being more memorable. Interesting.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

I see sentence- and area-shaped patterns, I think (my reading speed is very fast). I don't subvocalize while reading or hear the words in my head.

On the other hand, when people speak, I see their words in my head.

[oddlystrange.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting question for me because I'm dyslexic. I was taught to read by looking at word shapes. I have a memory from kindergarten, where I was pulled out of class every day for reading work, and reading the word "basket" based on its outline. It was a eureka moment for me.

I don't know if I read that way as much now, I still read much slower than the average person does, but I think it's because it's a twice-over for me. The first time I get the shape, the second time, I look at the letters.

[dnereverri.livejournal.com]

When I'm really into it, I hear the dialog in my head, but the rest just flows through -- I'm not aware of the words.

This is why I've never had a problem with Shakespeare, I think, and also why I have problems with a lot of poetry and non-fiction (no dialog, hence nothing to anchor my reading on).

All of the above! Or mostly, anyway...

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

Depends on what I'm reading. I think I do all of the above, at times.

I don't spell out or sound out familiar words--I just recognize them. Sometimes whole phrases too. But I do that to longer phrases rarely, because if I extrapolate and guess, I rapidly make mistakes and have to go back and read two or three times, like coats of paint, to make sure I haven't missed something, and that gets time consuming and shatters my immersion in the world. It's as if I hit a scratch on the DVD or a static burst on the videotape.

Unfamiliar words I sound out if they are important, and sometimes try to guess etymology. Strange names I do what others have said--recognize the shape and move on, without ever learning the actual spelling or pronounciation.

Nonfiction is much slower going. I read carefully, never knowing when the vital fact will be slipped in, so I burn out on reading nonfiction very quickly. Something hard like math, I chew over each major word, rereading to make sure it isn't a similar word with a different meaning. Then I am recognizing pieces of words, and sometimes individual letters when they are crucial.

I recognize misspellings as jarring interruptions, mostly by the word "looking wrong" or shattering the grammar and with it the thought. Examination of why a word looks wrong reveals the specific letters out of place. Convoluted sentences cause a "wipeout" where I have to go into dissection mode to parse, another "scratch on the DVD."

I picture stories I read, but I think I'm always somewhat aware that I am reading text on a page. Some stories the picture is sharper than others. Some, I barely get a shimmer. Dialogue I hear, complete with imagined accents, but as others have said, generally at higher speed unless the moment is dramatic and the words weighty. Sometimes my brain adds a soundtrack.

When people talk, I don't picture the words or letters at all, unless the words are strange and my brain is groping for a referent. Speech feels like a completely different "channel" in my brain from reading.

[moontoad.livejournal.com]

After reading through all those posts, I can't figure out how I read. Someone mentions subvocalizing, I start to do it. Someone else mentions skipping around, that came to the forefront. I don't normally subvocalize. Usually reading just forms images in my head, the same way that ASL does. Hearing doesn't form images, usually, I have to understand most of the words to create full understanding. I usually figure out what's going on through other means besides understanding what is said, which probably isn't so unusual since I'm deaf.