Reading Fast and Slow; A Guide to Subvocalization
Subvocalization is also often called “silent speech”. It’s this internal speech that happens when reading (and consequently, writing). Most people subvocalize while reading and writing.
In fact, you’re probably subvocalizing right now.
This silent, inner speech done while reading actually isn’t just in your head. There are actually very tiny movements that occur in your larynx, vocal cords, and other muscles related to speech; so tiny, that you can’t detect most of these movements without some sort of equipment or machinery.
It makes you wonder, why do we subvocalize?
To answer that, we need to see what happens if we consciously stop subvocalizing. If you’ve ever tried to speed read or skim through words, you’d know that your comprehension decreases significantly. This is due to the lack of subvocalization. In other words, subvocalizing helps you comprehend and understand what you read.
You may be like, “Ok, but why do we need to subvocalize to properly comprehend what we read? Why can’t we just interpret the symbols simply through sight?”
The thing is, the human brain lacks a dedicated region for reading. Reading is not a natural process that we are born with; contrary to something like speaking. You know how very young infants pick up words like “Dad” and “Mom” as well as react to language and speech at a very young age, even without being taught? Well, that’s because there are specific parts in the brain that control speech, largely in the Broca’s Area and the Wernicke’s Area.
This is why babies learn speech naturally even without any sort of formal education.
Reading on the other hand, is a relatively “unnatural” phenomena. In fact, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that reading is a cultural invention.
Humans invented writing around 5,000 years ago as a method of recording and transmitting/sharing information. It’s an “artificial” skill because we weren’t required to read or write before, nor is it a natural skill that we are naturally predisposed with.
The Process of Reading
Ok, so that’s what subvocalization is and why we do it. But how is it integrated in our overall reading process?
There are three main steps involved in the process of reading (this is a crude oversimplification, but bear with me here).
First, the visual identification of the letters. This is, as you can guess, visually identifying the letters having the identification sent to your occipital region.
The second step is relating speech with the symbols and letters. This is when the subvocalization occurs.
The third and final step is understanding the meaning of the speech, which occurs in the temporal lobe and the auditory cortex.
The brain efficiently uses parts of the brain originally used for other functions and creates a system for reading, of sorts. Subvocalization is a component of this system.
For example, the human brain has a visual processing region (primarily in the occipital cortex) that recognizes objects. Parts of this region adapt and are used to identify symbols and letters. This area is often called the “visual word form area” (VWFA). Before proper development of this region, children often have trouble recognizing and writing letters properly (disorders in this area may also be related to dyslexia and dysgraphia).
You can probably guess that this part of the brain undergoes a lot of change when we begin to read. Normally, our brain doesn’t pay much heed to abstract symbols and things, certainly not with much detail. When we begin to read our brain needs to pay attention to the different, abstract, symbols; it needs to pay attention to the difference between “b” and “d”.
The auditory system also adapts and develops to accommodate for reading. As we know, the auditory system allows us to interpret letters by recalling speech when we identify a certain letter. For example, seeing the letter “D” allows us to recall the sound /d/. Other parts in the temporal system also develop methods that allow us to interpret entire words and sentences.
This brings us back to the earlier statement that stated that reading isn’t a natural phenomena or skill we are born from birth (though, the relatively low difficulty in obtaining the skill raises the possibility that perhaps reading isn’t completely artificial), causing us to incorporate subvocalization.
But can we perhaps bypass subvocalization? And if we can, would we want to?
Subvocalization can slow down our reading, adding a whole, lengthy step to the reading process.
The question is, would we want to eliminate subvocalization, knowing that subvocalization is a necessary step in proper reading?
Speed-reading and skimming through text have their uses, especially when you have a test the next day but you slacked during the whole unit (totally couldn’t be me). But as we know, skimming and speed-reading decrease comprehension substantially, not to mention the immersion if you’re reading a piece of fiction. To put it bluntly, speed-reading and skimming aren’t techniques you can or should use all the time.
There are many anecdotal methods out there that claim to eliminate subvocalization while still reading “normally”; humming, counting, putting the tip of your tongue on the top of your mouth, along with many others. You can try these methods for yourself, but in my experience they didn’t work well nor were they satisfactory methods (who wants to count while reading a book), and they all decreased comprehension as well (for me).
However, there might just be a method that exploits subvocalization, in a sense. A method that still lets you absorb and comprehend information at a similar level to reading normally while increasing the speed at which you read. You can accomplish this by reading chunks and sentences at once.
When we read, subvocalization allows us to comprehend what we read better as it converts each word into speech in our heads. But what if we could convert and find the meaning of entire chunks and sentences? That would be a whole lot faster, yeah?
This is a method that can work well for some and not so well for others. If you’re proficient enough at reading in the language, this can work wonders when reading articles and other forms of large texts. By deciphering a general meaning for each sentence or chunk you take in rather than subvocalizing every word, you can replace the process of subvocalization with a much more efficient one.
The only other problem is the speed at which you consume information and text. In informative articles and texts, reading slower word by word is almost always gonna give you better comprehension and grasp over the topic. In fiction, by incorporating this you end up missing out on the plot and pacing of the story.
And ideally, when you’re reading fiction you should eventually get so immersed that the subvocalization is nearly drowned out by the vivid imagery and the world generated by the words. You should get so engrossed in the tiny gaps between the words that your consciousness forgets all about the subvocalization occurring.
In the end, speed reading and skimming are nice for searching for relevant information for what you actually need. Reading by absorbing sentences and chunks at a time is good for a faster albeit a highly comprehensive reading experience by eliminating traditional subvocalization.
But when it comes to comprehension and reading speed, subvocalization is unbeatable.
