Why does the act of reading trigger the larynx? Do you speed read?

I sometimes speed read, although it depends upon what I’m reading. The larynx moving, lips moving, reading aloud… all slow the reading process. I will sometimes read a particularly difficult or complex text aloud to help clarify it in my mind, but that is very rare. The best approach, in my opinion, is to read most passages at a steady pace, slowing down as the text becomes more difficult, speeding up as the difficulty decreases, and reading aloud only when presented with some text that is truly difficult for you to comprehend any other way.

That’s interesting.
I’ve been taking lots of classes about teaching reading and writing. The only thing I can add is that reading is both an auditory and visual process, so it makes sense to me that the tongue is involved.
In fact, phonological awareness is auditory, and young children who have high phonological awareness (an example is being good at things like rhyming) tend to be better at reading later in life.

@kevbo Do you have a link to the article?

For me it’s two separate processes. Reading for pleasure tends to trigger the subvocalization. Reading to absorb information is a purely visual process, as I learned to speed-read at a very early age. I’ve read that people with photographic or eidetic memory often bypass the vocalization part. With a textbook, I can call it up like a computer file and “read” it as necessary. Quite handy when taking exams, not so handy when you must internalize, analyze and interpret what you’ve read.

@Likeradar, it’s a ways down the page (and is actually primarily about something else), but here’s the relevant quote and link:

Here, I am reminded not of the recent past but of a huge change that occurred in the middle-ages when humans transformed their cognitive lives by learning to read silently. Originally, people could only read books by reading each page out loud. Monks would whisper, of course, but the dedicated reading by so many in an enclosed space must have been an highly distracting affair. It was St Aquinas who amazed his fellow believers by demonstrating that without pronouncing words he could retain the information he found on the page. At the time, his skill was seen as a miracle, but gradually human readers learned to read by keeping things inside and not saying the words they were reading out loud. From this simple adjustment, seemingly miraculous at the time, a great transformation of the human mind took place, and so began the age of intense private study so familiar to us now; whose universities where ideas could turn silently in large minds.

@kevbo Thanks :)

“Finally, does progress for humans lie in bypassing the larynx or is it more about a benefit of science that gives us another option for processing text?”
Or?
Can’t it be both? Isn’t science that gives us a better option the most common way for the human species to progress in this age?
Am I reading this sentence wrong?

@Fyrius, I meant the same as what you are saying.

I speed read sometimes. I don’t move my lips or “activate my larynx”, but I hear the words in my noggin. When I speed read really fast it takes some of the enjoyment out of it, and I use it mainly for getting through text to find something I’m looking for.
I college prep reading in HS, I could read 2500 wpm with 100% comprehension. It was on a computer, and it was as fast as I could push the next page command. My teacher loved watching my do that. I don’t think I could go that fast now, but I really don’t feel the desire to any more.

Fun fact: I actually find it easier to understand what a text says if I don’t read it aloud.

It used to be even worse when I was younger; I could either read a text aloud, or know what I just read. When I would be reading aloud I would be so busy translating the letters into speech that I would hardly have any attention left to also be aware of the content of what I would be saying.

I still find the pronouncing process more distracting than helpful. It also doesn’t help that speech is strictly linear and goes at a constant rate, whereas I might read one sentence more quickly and another more slowly than I would pronounce it, and I might backtrack a bit sometimes when I read silently.

Only when my head really can’t seem to absorb the content of a text that I’m struggling to read (like when I read homework late in the evening with no coffee), it sometimes helps to pronounce it.

This seems consistent with other examples of how imagining actions activates relevant areas in the motor cortices of the brain. Studies have found that when we imagine scenes, the muscles controlling eye movement contract as though the eyes are actually moving from imaginary object to imaginary object, and that when we think, the muscles of the tongue and lips vibrate slightly as though the words are being pronounced. Another study (Edfeldt, 1960) showed that even college students consistently move the muscles involved in speech when they read silently.

One theory is that the “inner speech” that triggers these motor components is fundamental to registering the words into our short-term “working memory”, the temporary storage necessary for stringing together a series of thoughts, as we do when we read. By silently speaking words to ourselves as we read, and going through the muscular motions, we can mentally play back the last few moments of that silent speech. We constantly do this “rewinding” as we read, mentally glancing back at what came before the current word so that we gradually get the full sense of that complex thought. Once that thought is grasped, the working memory is no longer needed, and the thought can move on to more permanent storage.

My understanding is that while normal-paced reading uses this phonological circuitry of the brain to encode information into working memory in the form of speech patterns, speed-reading uses visuo-spacial circuitry instead and encodes the information into working memory in visual form. This explains why the typical reader has a very hard time reading in noisy environments, while speed-readers tend to find this easier.

This is going to burst your bubble :)

The notion that reading ‘triggers the larynx’ is false. Some readers move their lips silently & maybe a few of them vocalize involuntarily—a small minority. Do you know of any credible evidence for a “larynx signal”, such as increased neuronal activity in laryngeal motor nerves during normal silent reading? Or increased activity in the corresponding location in the cerebral cortex?

The claim that “Speed reading programs tend to focus on techniques that bypass the larynx signal to allow direct and faster processing via the brain” also sounds bogus. Reading comprehension and formulation of speech occur in entirely different parts of the brain. Speech itself requires different areas of cerebral cortex to move the vocal cords, lips, & tongue. Even the idea that suppressing one kind of brain activity increases the speed of other activities strikes me as simplistic.

Nobody ever read privately until there were books, following Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1450—probably where the ‘500 years’ figure comes from.

But most troubling of all is the very concept of speed reading, which has been thoroughly debunked. Yes, Evelyn Wood made a lot of money fulfilling many a true believer’s wishes, but does it really work? Apparently not, according to the skeptical literature. Skimming is not reading. Here’s one article: The Skeptic’s Dictionary and an excerpt:

Skimming makes both comprehension and taking pleasure in words or ideas next to impossible. Why read fiction at all if you don’t want to enjoy the language and the ideas? Who would want to hire a physician or lawyer who skimmed rather than read his or her texts?

There are legitimate techniques for increasing your reading speed. Images of people burning through books at the rate of one full page in just 1 or 2 seconds, however, are phony baloney.

Great question!

@kevbo would your question (and answers) have anything to add to this question do you think? about yawning and reading? just wondering…

I wonder if that finding (in @kevbo ‘s question) is altogether accurate. The reason for the design of the book, first manuscript, then printed, and evolved over many centuries is the way humans scan and absorb writing. Fast readers will scan line by line – especially if the material is not very challenging, and the line not too long. I suppose it is the same, irrespective of direction of the text – up, down, left to right, right to left. BTW, speed reading is a technique, not an end in itself. Reading fast is of little use if it reduces comprehension.

@gasman “Do you know of any credible evidence for a “larynx signal”, such as increased neuronal activity in laryngeal motor nerves during normal silent reading?”

“The research that does link speech to silent reading has used adult readers as subjects. Scientific studies by Curtis (1900), Edfelt (1960), Hardyck and Petrinovich (1969), and Scheck (1925) used various types of instrumentation (electromyographic equipment being the most sophisticated) that revealed discernable muscular movements in the larynx of adults as they read silently. This voiceless, muscular activity has caused researchers to use a variety of terms to describe the linguistic nature of silent reading including inner speech, implicit speech, and covert speech. The most popular of these terms is subvocalization.” (source)

I don’t have any research articles or anything, but my education is in Speech and Hearing… babies are able to associate meaning with gestures for expressive language as early as seven months, but oral motor skills for verbal language don’t develop a few months later.

So for most people we learn language by speaking, and we learn reading through sound-symbol association of phonics. I believe that is the source of laryngeal activation while reading… I bet this could be studied very easily by putting electrodes around the larynx to test muscle activity.

Most deaf people have difficulty learning to read, and many never get beyond a 4th Grade reading level… even though they start using Sign Language earlier than hearing babies start using spoken language.

I can’t speculate about developing more efficient receptive written communication… There must be studies in Linguistics and Speech-Language about these topics, though.

@Harp Looks like I stand corrected—so-called emergent readers were studied—but I wonder why the article, published in 2004 (in The Reading Teacher , the journal of the International Reading Association), has no references later than1968 ? There’s nothing on this at Snopes but Wikipedia has articles on Subvocalization and Speed Reading .

@kevbo To clarify my earlier answer: There were books long before Gutenberg, including scrolls of antiquity, tediously hand-written affairs not widely available before printing. Still, it might have been the custom to vocalize when reading alone—writing based as it is on spoken language. I liked your earlier link (Barry Smith at Univ. of London at edge.org ) about Thomas Aquinas teaching others to read silently. That predates Gutenberg quite a bit.

Also, sorry if my skeptical impulses came on too strong. I should have said ”...is questionable” rather than ”...is false”. I’m used to sites where pseudoscience is routinely dispensed in large doses to a highly credulous online community. I’m new to Fluther—you guys are a little more cerebral :)

Bottom line: I worry that scientific reports of subvocalization might be exploited by scam artists to support dubious claims for a new speed reading system. It would be an old wolf in new sheep’s clothing.

Skeptical proverb: Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.

To amend my previous remarks: Speed reading is not “skimming”. It is a technique for rapidly absorbing information and works best when coupled with an eidetic or visual memory. It is definitely not “pleasure reading”. It is a discipline that some people can learn and others can’t. The Wood system can help people increase their reading speed, but true “speed reading” seems to require a strong visual memory, which you either have or lack.

I won’t comprehend as well if I read out loud. I don’t mouth my words. I am a VERY fast reader.

This may sound weird, but I hear a voice in my head as I read. Kind of like a narrator.

I have no idea if that helps any of your questions!