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PhotoReading is a commercial learning product of Learning Strategies Corporation, a private school licensed since 1986 by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education to teach PhotoReading throughout the state^[1][2]. PhotoReading is taught in live seminars by the company and by over 80 independent instructors who are certified annually^[3]. PhotoReading is also offered through a personal learning course (nine CDs, manual, three books, three DVDs)^[4]. The PhotoReading book, which explains the system in detail, has been published in 15 languages. The cover of the fourth edition of the book claims over 700,000 copies in print^[5].

PhotoReading is a speedy process by which readers' ability to process written information is directly proportional to the amount of information on each page and the reader's rate of page-flipping. It is to be distinguished from normal reading, as it is claimed to utilise subconscious peripheral vision rather than conscious vision and thought.

Contents 1 Concept 2 General Steps of Photoreading 3 Skeptical Response 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Concept

A day or two after PhotoReading a book, the reader is supposed to be able to activate the information manually by scanning the book and dipping into portions of the text which he or she feels are important. It is claimed that activation can also occur spontaneously, in which the reader gets flashes of insights related to the book, although Scheele describes this kind of activation as uncommon.

The system was said to be invented by Paul Scheele, but the company of Subliminal Dynamics claimed that Scheele stole ideas from them.^[6] In response, Paul Scheele has stated^[7] that he did indeed get the idea of subliminal perception from them, but that his course differed because his course makes use of neuro-linguistic programming and "preconscious processing".

[edit] General Steps of Photoreading

The PhotoReading method consists of several steps. First, the reader puts himself or herself into an accelerated learning state through hypnosis. The reader then reads a book's table of contents, index, and similar non-essential matter, as well as glancing at various parts of the book; this is to gain an idea of the book's structure. After this, the reader stares at the pages of the book, changing page every second or so. Then, some time later (up to a day afterward), the reader begins to peruse the book to fill in the details and concepts missed by the preview and photoread steps. The reader "fills in" details by asking questions of what the book could teach, creating mind maps, scanning (glancing) down pages and dipping (reading normally) paragraphs that stand out or skittering (reading at angles instead of horizontally) each paragraph.

[edit] Skeptical Response

In January 2000 Dr. Danielle S. McNamara submitted a preliminary report involving two participants including McNamara to the NASA Ames Research Center on PhotoReading. McNamara enrolled in what she said was a PhotoReading workshop under the tutelage of an unnamed and unverified instructor who she said, in three years, had trained about 150 individuals in PhotoReading. McNamara practiced the PhotoReading technique over two months. The two participants named in the study were "(a) the PhotoReading trainee who participated in a two-day PhotoReading workshop, and (b) the PhotoReading expert who provided the PhotoReading workshop." (McNamara 4). The study design included two normal pretests, followed by parallel versions of five reading tests employing the PhotoReading technique. One test was the Nelson Reading Comprehension Test (forms G and H) and the Verbal Reasoning section of the MCAT. The other two tests were generated by the experimenter. This study tests only difficult expository texts because "PhotoReading has been claimed to be particularly effective for this type of text" (McNamara 5). The texts used here involve subjects like physiology, perception, and biology. Each question from these texts were generated around a single idea or sentence within each text. According to McNamara "The information in the text that is targeted by the question generally requires little prior knowledge and little active processing of the text to understand" (McNamara 6). The results of the study generally follow the pattern that PhotoReading and normal reading require a similar amount of time to complete. For example, the expert scored 37 of 38 possible questions correct with normal reading taking 19.43 minutes to do so. Then he/she took a similar test after PhotoReading the passage and scored a 38 out of 38 possible questions correct in a time of 18.13 minutes. McNamara took the same test, and scored a 92% both times. However, PhotoReading took 21.30 minutes whereas regular reading took 15.80 minutes. These results show that PhotoReading can work, but they do not support Scheele's 25,000 words per minute claims. In a text about perception, the expert took 8.82 minutes to read the text using normal reading. Then, he/she "photoread" the text in 0.87 minutes and proceeded to read the text for another 8.12 minutes before he/she completed the process. In the text involving normal reading he/she answered three questions correctly out of eight. PhotoReading, he/she scored only 1 out of 8 correctly. These results do not support Scheele's assertions that PhotoReading help one study faster and with greater comprehension than with ordinary reading techniques. To conclude the preliminary report, McNamara noted that, "In terms of words per minute (wpm) spent reading, there was no difference between normal reading (M = 114 wpm) and PhotoReading (M=112 wpm)" (10). So why is it that so many people tout PhotoReading? In her conclusion, McNamara states that, "One aspect of the PhotoReading technique is that it leaves the reader with a false sense of confidence." (12). [1]

Summary of the Learning Strategies Corporation response:

In a statement on their website^[8], and summarized here, PhotoReading developer Paul Scheele and Learning Strategies dismissed the NASA study as irrelevant because it did not meet the protocols sanctioned by the standards of the International Review Board for human subject experiments^[9]. NASA paid Dr. Danielle McNamara to conduct a preliminary exploration of PhotoReading. The resulting report was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. The study was handicapped by two factors: inadequate subject numbers and researcher bias. When Scheele discussed these points with McNamara in a phone interview on September 10, 2008, McNamara laughed and said, “Don’t people understand that this was just a preliminary examination?”

The study consisted of only two subjects: “the expert” and McNamara (“the trainee”). McNamara cannot identify “the expert” cited in the study, and no instructors certified by Learning Strategies Corporation are known to have participated in any such study.

The fact that the researcher herself (“the trainee”) is one of the two subjects in this study makes researcher bias a major consideration for dismissing the validity of the study entirely. Additionally, McNamara stated her bias in the report’s introduction:

“…skilled reading involves active, conscious, and strategic processing of the information in a text…”

“…Learning from a text requires the reader to consciously process the information…”

“Thus, according to theories of reading comprehension, successful comprehension using the PhotoReading technique should not be possible.”

McNamara also stated, “The objective of this study was to provide a relatively objective examination of the effectiveness of PhotoReading.” Scheele said it would be one thing if a researcher held a bias and a working hypothesis was stated and tested, but when the researcher is also the subject of the study, then the study cannot be an “objective examination” and cannot be taken as an experimental design.

When questioned by Scheele about her bias, McNamara admitted to having no awareness of the work in cognitive psychology regarding the nonconscious acquisition of information nor of the research into preconscious processing, which form the basis for the PhotoReading step in the PhotoReading Whole Mind System.

[edit] See also

• Neuro-linguistic programming
• Speed reading
• Visual memory
• Hypnosis
• Altered States of Consciousness
• Theta Mental State
• Flow state

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Learning Strategies – PhotoReading home page