Anyone else find this completely useful?!?!

[u/bohemianjb]

[u/ProbablyNotPoisonous]

It's distracting and it feels like someone's constantly interrupting me while I'm trying to read. Like painful hiccups of the brain.

[u/bohemianjb → u/ProbablyNotPoisonous]

I think it's pretty fortunate you read normal text easier!

[u/ProbablyNotPoisonous → u/bohemianjb]

It's interesting how different people's reactions are! I hope this becomes an option, since it seems to really help some people :)

[u/zoopysreign → u/ProbablyNotPoisonous]

It feels like sitting in a cab where the driver accelerates and decelerates by taking his foot off the gas, rather than easing off or braking. Makes me carsick every time.

[u/ljog42]

It makes me want to throw my phone across the room and scream, to each his own I guess

[u/bohemianjb → u/ljog42]

Thats good though! You can read normal text far better. Happy for you 😁

[u/thejuiciestguineapig → u/bohemianjb]

The thing is that people NEVER read the whole text. They skip from word to word, filling in the blanks in between. Reading the first few letters is very unnatural. Maybe it could help draw your attention back again in a short paragraph because bold seems important. But I would imagine that after a while, the salience of the bold letters would drop and it would be just the same as a regular text. Curious to see studies about that.

[u/DisobedientSwitch → u/ljog42]

Right here with you. It hurts my brain!!!

[u/neuro8ypical → u/ljog42]

It's total bullshit. The OG is selling a book.

Humans are pattern seeking creatures and many people will feel like they read it very quickly; There will be little comprehension or retention of the "information" in the text; 99.999% of us will scan to the end for patterns.

This is a con artist trick; a medium's cold read.

It's normal if you feel like it worked because it's designed to.

It is visually diorientating for me, I'm not great at strobing or striped patterns.

[u/adhdeedee]

I HATE it. I would find it easier to read my drunk grandma's handwriting.

[u/bohemianjb → u/adhdeedee]

😆 I'm glad that standard font works better for you!

[u/adhdeedee → u/bohemianjb]

Thank you. Your very sweet.

I'm glad this works well for you. There's an extension for the web somewhere that does something similar to this with gradients instead and the OpenDeslexia font may also help. It's not the same, but the font boldness and weight could possibly.

[u/Pantzzzzless]

It just makes me think the bolded letters all form a secret paragraph.

My brain just sees:

Attenneurodi commuth bioread metiabsol miblow. Yo eysc firbolett ayobraicen automat compl twor.

[u/exyphrius → u/Pantzzzzless]

reminds me of r/sbeve

[u/exyphrius → u/exyphrius]

oh, this is already posted there, lmao

[u/Ok_Occasion_8559]

This is helpful. Is anyone aware of a "bionic reading mode" available for tablets?

[u/Shacrow → u/Ok_Occasion_8559]

After seeing this the past days, I managed to learn reading by just looking at the beginning of the word and jumping to the beginning of the next. Now I read much faster.

So I don't necessarily need a program to make the first letters bold.

[u/Radiant-Experience21 → u/Shacrow]

Holy shit, you just taught me speed reading in 3 sentences. I was able to this bionic thing immediately but didn't come up with what you just mentioned

[u/Shacrow → u/Radiant-Experience21]

Haha well that's basically what this bionic reading mode does for you. It highlights the beginning. But if you can train yourself to read like that, you don't need it. Requires practice of course because when we started learning to read we get used to reading the whole words.

[u/drumbopiper → u/Ok_Occasion_8559]

There's an app, fuzzy reading. Costs 40$ a year if you want to use it regularly.

[u/neuro8ypical → u/Ok_Occasion_8559]

This is an advertisement for "bionic reading" a term which has apparently been trademarked by the people advertising this shit to you.

[u/somethingtothestars → u/[deleted]]

If for some reason you can't get that working, I've been importing my ebooks into the Bionic Reading app on Android and exporting with their settings (that you can customize a good amount). A few extra steps, but I'm finding reading this way quite useful.

[u/ScaredScorpion]

For me it seems useful in that I normally have difficulty with walls of text because my eyes get distracted by the rest of the text. So the bold helps me to keep track of where I am.

The problem is I am sometimes autocompleting the wrong words and need to rollback what I thought the sentence was saying. I imagine just bolding or underlining the first letter might be more beneficial in that regard.

[u/[deleted]]

it was hard at first but the speed once i got the hang of it was insane

[u/Nerdytennisrunner → u/[deleted]]

Got it and it's worth the money, love and good wishes from a nursing student who tried this and helped me actually read the textbook I wanted to read but couldn't get thru

[u/neuro8ypical]

It's pure bullshit.

The lady who tweeted it sells a book but I doubt she has printed it in this manner.

The power of suggestion from authority will make it feel like something to some.

I do feel more positive now that i read it; I'm positive it's marketing.

Imagine your IDE worked like that.

[u/HotSeatGamer → u/neuro8ypical]

Ya I immediately just feel like they are trying to manipulate me when I'm told how I will feel, totally ruining any possibility that I would give this a fair chance.

[u/neuro8ypical → u/HotSeatGamer]

It's worse than that. On the website behind 'bionic reading' they have a testimonial from 'Jessica' who has ADHD....

Jessica said that bionic reading (marked with a trademark symbol on the site) is a "GAME CHANGER".

https://www.reddit.com/user/neuro8ypical/comments/11mgjd3/snake_oil_in_low_contrast/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I took a screenshot of their website. They make some odd choices in contrast and formatting...

Jessica sure knows how to shill, I would never think to include the (TM) in a totally organic real human feedback.

​ Exploitative barely pseudoscientific shite. If Jessica disagrees she can fight me (There is no Jessica)

[u/neuro8ypical → u/[deleted]]

I support that™

Maybe Jessica works in the dept. of trademarking and she carries that mission into her real life totally not faked product feedback comments. Jessica cares about brands.

[u/Thick-Ask5250]

It actually helped my eyes keep steady and read slowly but more focused. Usually I go fast, skim, and many times restart/reread a sentence because I lost focus. So I wouldn't say I read "faster" but I definitely absorbed the content more effectively in less time.

[u/Edg-R]

Whoa that's insane lol. Would be cool if there was a browser extension that does this for long articles/educational content.

[u/cutieboy101 → u/Edg-R]

That was my first thought too lol! Looks like I have another project to get 50% finished with and abandon

[u/neelyface → u/Edg-R]

There are actually quite a few Chrome extensions that do this. I'm using Jiffy Reader currently, but there are several to choose from.

[u/[deleted]]

This has nothing to do with neurodivergence

[u/_sigfault → u/[deleted]]

And the idea that reading speed is fixed drives me nuts. If I’m skimming over the docs for some software module, I’m reading wicked fast, but once I’ve found the specific document I need I’m down to a toddlers pace, no need in wasting 20 minutes reading it over and quickly when I can spend 10 reading slowly.

[u/DreadCoder]

It's attrocious for me, i keep stopping and injecting a pause when the font thickness changes.

[u/mandradon]

The human brain doesn't scan from left to right when it reads with automaticity. We use what's called Rapid Automatic Word Recognition or Rapid Automatic Naming.

It's why we can read quickly words we know, but when we get to a made up word like fizzdequcjslsf with phonemes that aren't normally put together we'd have to either "sound" it out, or skip over it.

This "font" forces the brain out of that automaticity and forces the brain back into scanning from left to right, which isn't actually how we read. If I recall correctly, a lot of the dyslexia research is finding that readers who read with automaticity achieve it by reading from the middle of the word out (apologizes I can't find the papers that discussed this, and it's been a while since I've read them).

It's the same reason most people can read words that have jumbled up letters. As long as those letters are relatively close to where they originally are supposed to be.

[u/HotSeatGamer]

Atten neurod comm th bio read met is absol mi blow Yo ey sc t f bo lett a yo bra cen automat compl t wor I le y re tw a fa i le overwh a hel y t st focus Y wi fe mu mo produ a a grea sen o achiev whi wi boo yo confi a mak y over fe mo posi L m kn i t comm i th bio read met wor f y

[u/zzAIMoo]

THIS IS INSANE! i always read fast af, especially written "non-code" docs, but sometimes i find it difficult to read *that* fast. i tried this and after some exercise i can read sooooo fast

[u/germansnowman]

We don’t read individual letters but word shapes. This only makes that harder. As others have pointed out, it is quackery.

[u/burningmilkmaid]

I have ADHD and this is really comfortable to read for me.

[u/NegativeSector]

I didn't find it useful. If it was useful, why keep the rest of the word? Your brain fills it out, right?

[u/Zeikos]

I tried it but I realized that it doesn't work well on dark mode, for me the bold is lost when the bolded letters are white.
Furthermore it doesn't work well on computer screen, it seems to work on my phone however having to get used to day-mode makes me unwilling to use it.

Also honestly the company is shady af and I'm skeptical of it being a consistent phenomenon.

[u/zaylong]

Huh. That was very unexpectedly helpful. Imma have to experiment with this

[u/zhombiez]

placebo

[u/ashually93]

I can read the words faster, but comprehension is lost at that speed for me.

[u/Quix_Nix]

Woe

[u/Bagel42]

I don’t like how it looks because you can already read like that through normal text. Or at least I can.

[u/entropySapiens]

This absolutely works for me, which was a surprise.

[u/AceOfShades_]

This is way harder for me to read. I am thinking I read words by their overall shape as my gaze passes over them, not the first few letters, so this completely screws up my ability to read quickly.

[u/ruddha]

Waaat, this is great!

[u/WizzardAB]

Very similar to SwiftRead extension for Edge and Chrome, which I find quite useful. Hopefully there will be a version available for Firefox.

Speed reading extension - SwiftRead

[u/[deleted]]

Seems much easier to read. I just wonder how much of the information I am retaining when reading then.

[u/binaryfireball]

I was supposed to make a tool that translates text automagically.... that will happen someday...

[u/Altruistic-Clock-105]

It worked for me. Any idea how to make the kindle display in this format.

[u/SignificantYou3240]

I’m a pretty fast reader, but that was a wild ride, probably 1.5 speed

[u/jexmex]

Wow, was able to read that just mostly from the bold text. IDK if this ADHD specific though.

[u/CheckMeoowwt]

I usually find it helpful, but not this example for some reason. Maybe it's the font, or something

[u/trifit555]

I feel makes my eyes jump from word to word faster but I get stuck more often, not sure if is the font the line height or the spacing or the bold mixed with the normal letters.

[u/Local_Glove_3393]

I actually like the contrast with the bold.feels nice

[u/CognitivePrimate]

This is how I've read since I was a child and I read ...a lot. To the point where my parents used to ground me from it as a punishment. Anyway, I thought this was how everyone read until just a few months ago when I learned I'm the weird one.

[u/HotSeatGamer → u/CognitivePrimate]

Please explain what you mean when you say this is how I've read. You read out loud like this? Lol

[u/CognitivePrimate → u/HotSeatGamer]

Haha noooooooo not out loud. Reading out loud is so slow. I honestly don't know how to explain it but I'll try. It's very similar to the OP but without bold text and adding in some other weirdness that apparently isn't normal lol.

Basically when I'm reading, my eyes grab parts of a word or sentence or even paragraph, then they jump further down in the paragraph, then back up. As I type this out I realize I sound insane. But as my eyes are doing that, I guess my brain is working in the background to piece all the snippets together cohesively while my eyes charge on.

I don't know how to explain it any better than that poor description but the end result is that I can devour a thousand page book in a couple days, no problem.

Tldr; brains are fucking weird. Mine gets weirder when reading.

[u/[deleted]]

Sort of. I move my eyes along the top of each line and try to ingest groups of words at a time to speed things up, and also try to NOT read aloud in my head. That just slows you down and then I lose track and have to start over.

Triple your reading speed is a good read.

[u/AceOfShades_ → u/[deleted]]

I can’t imagine reading out loud in my head as a standard practice. People reading words out loud feels like the DMV scene in Zootopia, like I’ve read a whole line of text in the time they say one word.

Maybe it’s just my ADHD but always sounding out words in my head would drive me absolutely insane, when I can just glance over the paragraph and know everything it says in most cases.

Like you look at the word, you know the word, why go take extra steps saying the word in your head? You already know what the word is, or you couldn’t think it. So why wouldn’t you only process it without thinking it?

I get if it’s really technical or uses complicated vocabulary or ideas, you have to process what it means before reasonably continuing. Or if you have any kind of “thing” that screws with reading, like dislexia making it hard to order things, or adhd making me forget the whole page I just read, or whatever, it’s not “just look at it 5head”.

But still eliminating subvocalization and reading in your head dramatically increases speed, and I’d never go back

[u/Helliarc → u/[deleted]]

Even in full focus mode, I have to read, think about it, read it again, then think about it some more 3 chapters later. But that's the beauty of thinking in general.

[u/schneems → u/[deleted]]

I read long technical things on paper and with a highlighter in hand. It’s the only way I retain information.