translate this please:
One possible solution to the inability to reread in RSVP would be to incorporate a “go back” button on the device that would repeat the text for the reader, a feature that many apps using RSVP technology, including Spritz, have added. However, many of these buttons merely start the text (or sentence) over from the beginning. One recently announced version of RSVP technology to be released for the Amazon Kindle claims that it will allow readers to use their finger to scan through the text continuously in order to move backward or forward to a particular word. This is an improvement over only being able to start at the beginning of a sentence in that it allows for more flexibility in moving through the text. However, it has not been shown that these methods for regressing (or skipping forward) in RSVP are as effective as the eyes are in conventional reading, in which readers have a spatial representation of the text and a sense of where to move their eyes to clarify something and where to return to continue reading. In order to do this in a truly effective way, the device would need to know how far back in the text to go and would need to repeat the text from that point. Regression behavior in reading is one of the less understood aspects of the process, so even generating a general principle for this would be difficult—not to mention that there is substantial variability both across and within individuals in the sequence with which they reread words (von der Malsburg & Vasishth, 2011).
Another concern about apps using RSVP is that they do not allow for parafoveal preview. As we have discussed, a large body of research using the moving-window paradigm (see Rayner, 2014) and boundary paradigm (see Schotter et al., 2012) has shown that information from more than just the currently fixated word is used. Some information obtained from the next word before it is directly fixated is used to give the reader a head start on processing it; if this preview is denied (e.g., if the word is masked until it is fixated or not presented at all), reading time for the word is longer than if it had been visible. With the single-word RSVP method, readers do not have, and therefore cannot take advantage of, preview information.
An important concern about RSVP-based apps regards the limits that such a technique may pose for comprehension. In the “Rapid Serial Visual Presentation” section above, we described a number of studies that showed similar levels of comprehension for full text reading and RSVP when words were presented at a normal rate. It appears that, at least when comprehension is measured as it was in those studies, the elimination of parafoveal preview and of opportunities for regressive movements to earlier parts of a text do not markedly undermine text understanding when RSVP is used. But two crucial caveats must be emphasized. First, when pauses between sentences were not included in RSVP presentations of text, comprehension clearly suffered (Masson, 1983). Second, speeding text presentation beyond normal reading rates consistently led to reduced levels of comprehension and memory (Juola et al., 1982; Potter et al., 1980). These results indicate that the mental operations responsible for assembling viewed words into meaningful ideas and retaining them in memory cannot be completed if adequate time is not provided. Therefore, the promise that RSVP can produce faster reading without compromising understanding and memory is not supported by the research we reviewed.
As of the writing of this article, we are familiar with only two published studies that directly compared traditional reading to reading with (an approximation of) Spritz (Benedetto et al., 2015; Dingler, Shirazi, Kunze, & Schmidt, 2015). Only one of these studies objectively compared comprehension in RSVP reading and conventional reading (Benedetto et al., 2015). That study involved a passage of text taken from George Orwell’s 1984, and participants were allowed to pause the RSVP stream whenever they wanted. Taking these pauses into account, the average reading speed in the traditional reading condition and that in the RSVP condition were very similar and somewhat slower than normal reading (200 and 209 wpm, respectively). Reading via RSVP increased eye fatigue relative to traditional reading and, although accuracy was equivalent on comprehension questions that required making inferences, it was poorer on comprehension questions that assessed literal comprehension of the text. These data suggest that readers were still able to get the gist of the passage when reading at normal rates via RSVP but that their ability to maintain a veridical representation of the wording of the text was impaired. It is likely that even the gist representation would have been impaired at faster RSVP rates. Additional work needs to be done to evaluate reading using technologies such as Spritz, and this work will need to be presented in peer-reviewed conferences and journals so that it can be evaluated by the scientific community.
Based on the research that has been done on normal reading and RSVP, we suspect that presentation of moderately complex texts via RSVP apps will not allow people to achieve the goal of greatly increasing reading speed (e.g., by doubling or tripling their normal rate) while maintaining good comprehension. The real practical application of RSVP may be for wearable technology like smartwatches and glasses with optical displays that have only enough space to present one or two words at a time. The RSVP method may be the only viable way to display text on these screens. If the message is not too long or complex, RSVP may suffice to get it across.