Hypothesis: the deterioration of vision in one’s formative years improves ones reading ability in the long term.
Rationale: because a person’s vision is slightly blurrier, one becomes accustomed to reading blurry things. They are better able to read quickly because they are not accustomed to perfectly clear letters, and are better trained in recognizing and processing the general shape of letters. In addition, because the periphery of ones vision is generally lower-resolution, having less definition in the center of ones field of vision decreases the distinction between periphery and center, encouraging a person to process more of their periphery, and thus improving skills that are useful in speed reading.
Anecdotal evidence: two of the fastest readers I know have terrible vision, and I have perfect vision and read relatively slowly. In discussing reading with one of my fast-reading friends, it came out that I tend to scan every word closesly, lose my place easily, and have little ability to read anything not in the absolute center of my field of vision, while she can skim a page almost down the middle, and read blocks of text without having to trace each word or even each line.
Thoughts?