Talk:Vision span

message: Could someone site sources for this five letter reading span that "reading research shows"?  I happen to be one of those people who teaches others to read at rates of around 1000 words a minute.  In order to do that, the human eye has to be able to see several words together, usually up to five.  cf Speed reading.  My own experience at speed reading 10,000+WPM tells me that the human eye can take in enormous volumes of words at a glance.  The amount of information the human eye can take in is dependant upon:
#the eyeglass prescription
#the distance the text is held from the face
#the size of the typefont
#the experience of the reader
#how tired your eyes are
#what you had for breakfast and how long since you have eaten anything
#etc etc ad nauseum...
Before I boldly go in and rewrite this whole article, I would like to know why I shouldn't...?  -- Jim Whitaker Metaphorman 08:57, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Some people can speed read for real.  Most cannot. The inner mental processes of those who can read and retain at high speeds are different than those people who learn to gloss their eyes over text at outrageously high speeds.  Most such "natural" speed readers don't subject themselves to reading comprehension tests.  -- Jim Whitaker Metaphorman 00:09, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I used to use "speed reading" techniques to ace midterms and final exams.  We are talking classes like Organic Chemistry and Physics.  They sent me to college full time when I was 13 years old in part because of that.  Most people apparently cannot do that....  Just because YOU can't do that and people who can do it for real are rare doesn't mean that there is something wrong with me (or you).  It took years of training myself to find ways to put information I was reading into active use in order to get information to "stick".  Those techniques are not taught in most speed reading courses which basically tell you to "read faster" and "keep reading faster".  The kind of schooling that teaches "reading for ever greater speed" is ridiculous.  It is really too bad that you haven't stumbled on a system that actually works.  They don't sell well because they are hard to teach.  Courses in speed reading cannot teach inner mental processes, they can only teach the surface appearance of speed reading.  Any idiot can learn to gloss their eyes over text.  Throughout history there have been people who read extremely rapidly (sometimes called natural speed readers such as John Stuart Mill).  Trying to teach others to do it without the problems latent in speed reading courses is somewhat problematical.  If you take a look at the wikibook article Speed Reading you can get some semblance of an appreciation for inner mental processes that work and are moderately teachable.  If a reader focuses on putting information to use rather than trying to keep his eyes moving at a constant high steady speed over the text, speed eventually comes naturally.  -- Jim Whitaker Metaphorman 00:09, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

text: Vision span is a term used in speed reading courses.  I haven't seen it used outside of that context.  Hence this article was created to explain it in more detail without burdening the text of the article with details about vision span.  -- Jim Whitaker Metaphorman 00:09, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

message: I have removed the following sentence: "There is also the problem of the blind spot, an area near the center of vision in which the human eye has no cone cells or rod cells at all, and sees nothing." Firstly, even in context of the entire paragraph, it is not clear to what "problem" this statement refers. The peripheral vision may not be used in speed-reading, but the existence of a physiological blind spot is generally not a problem because one eye covers for the other. Secondly, it's not clear as to whether this usage of "blind spot" is referring to the physiological blind spot or anatomical blind spot. It certain confuses the meaning of the sentence in that there are areas of the eye that have or do not have photoreceptors, but there are no areas of vision that have or do not have photoreceptors. -AED 04:16, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Blind spot

message: There is a mysterious reference, on this page, to 'rauding'.  The link merely redirects to 'Reading (Process)'.  Could somebody, perhaps, explain this term?
Dreadnought1906 (talk) 01:22, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: 'Rauding'

message: The whole section on applications to speed reading seems like a barely veiled attempt at discrediting speed reading entirely, yet without ever going so far as to directly state that it doesn't exist (although it does leave open the door for the possibility that some mentally imbalanced people can move their eyes rapidly enough to read thousands of words per minute, seemingly to wave a hand to the acknowledgement that speed reading has been demonstrated to exist). 
The section may be a collection of facts of some sort, though I really feel at a loss as to the overall coherence of it, and I feel that it's because the author is just trying to prove some ideology without saying it and it's not clear exactly what that is, but maybe it's just me.
Also, he mentions in two places that claims have been "found to be false" without citation.  Even if he mentions a lack of cone cells in the first place, I would think a citation for that fact is in order.  (Exactly how many cone cells *are* missing?  How do we deduce ability to tell words from that?  How do we know no other type of cell is involved?  How many people agree with this data?  Etc.)  I won't put citation needed tags because I don't feel an expert enough on Wikipedia practices, so I'll leave that to someone else. Inhahe (talk) 12:38, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: What is this author actually saying?

message: Can a section or list of links please be added regarding causes of reduced vision span. I have only 2 characters in focus with corrective lenses despite having normal results for peripheral light tests. What that is called is a mystery to me and many others. There must be several conditions affecting others where a reduction in vision span is significant. Not just dyslexia and tunnel vision. --tygrus (talk) 15:50, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conditions causing reduced vision span when reading