Reading Glasses

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?

Or reading itself deteroriates vision and those who read most read fastest. Many hunter gatherer groups don’t share our population’s visual problems.

Straight dope article references study from late 60s about an Eskimo group introduced to modern civ. The older people’s myopia rates were like zero (56up) in parents 30plus 8% in their children 59%

straight dope article shows even monkeys get myopic in dim conditions, allegedly from straining to see objects. Like many readers.

How would one go about testing these two claims separately? Both seem plausible to me , and they aren’t mutually exclusive.

To isolate genetic influences, which my hypothesis would rely on more heavily, a study would have to include either twins, or parentaly vision history and reading habits. The correlation between parent and child vision would estalish non-environmental origins for poor eyesight, and these could be compared with reading speed and child eyesight. I.E., children born to parents who had poor vision but read seldom, and who themselves had poor vision and read often, should, if I’m right, be better at reading.

Happens 2 fast for genetic influences and its observed across groups when they first adapt civilization. As the article notes. You should consider the effect of reading especially destructive since the eyesight gets worse in correlation to reading dim light etc EVEN coming from people who had massively good eyesight.

Dunno how you’d get evidence for your hypothesis but I think some of the conditions noted apply as seperate evidence ie civi correlation but no genetic correlation in how fadt eyesight degraded

I need glasses for small-print only: due to having an astigmatism, but yes, I can scan pages and skim-read articles quite easily.

Contrary to what my opthalmologist/opthalmologists say, one can better one’s eyesight by doing eye-strengthening exercises - a case of maintaining profit margins, perhaps.

Im blind as hell and read really fast.

braille mugs are better than reading glasses

-Imp

Is that braille on the mug the same thing as acne on a pubescent face? On the other hand, I would pay a quarter to watch a glass read.

I have pretty crappy vision in multiple ways…near-sited, 50% slower focus time in my left eye from my right eye, astigmatism, decreased focus time (somewhere around 30%) from near to far or far to near objects, cannot read white on green/green on white/blue on white/red on white/blue on red/red on blue, etc… color combination’s as they appear as blurred fuzz unless I am directly feet in front of it.

I read pretty slow; about a page in 1.30 to 1.45 min.

That said, the difference seems to be that I remember nearly everything about what I’m reading.
It’s not photographic by any means, but I can recall details of stories and articles years later.

Many times, I can describe small parts of features or details regarding a person or thing that I have read.

I do not fair well with names or proper titles, but I can recall the imagery that the article or story placed in my mind.
Sometimes the imagery is superficial in that it is only there to recall the information with…for instance, Red equates to caroselles, hookers, seedy apartments, phony professors, a baseball glove, a bench of realization in silence, and a shut-in reclusive author because these are the aspects of the book, “Catcher In The Rye”.

Grey/Mud/Dark Green mixture recalls mustard gas, gum’s bleeding, dirt so deep in the pores that you feel as if though it is your own skin, Muller (and by cross reference neon green due to a cross reference to X-Files, which also brings in colors orange/red and weathered tan, for other long-winded reasons centered around the Smoking Man and Skully), boomers (from a related sci-fi re-take of the book, though add the colors gold and purple to the mix), trenches, pissing one’s pants, french women, school boy-hood in Germany pre-WWI, and the acceptance of death because these were the components of, “All Quiet On The Western Front”.

That’s just some idea of things…

As for detail that I’m talking about…I still know how many rings are on a hollow knot that’s on a beam of warped and torn wood outside of the bunker in a trench in Western Front…and I still know the colors of the carousel horses, as well as the feel of the field tearing into my hands which feels liberating from the Rye.

These are the kinds of things that I end up with in my mind near permanently from reading.
It takes me about a month or so to read a small book.

This made me think of blind humans in the future who are so intelligent eyesight is not necessary because everything can be sensed with the mind more realistically than with eyesight. Maybe a decent sci fi movie side note.

Maybe make a good movie about getting eaten by a bear. or tiger.

Some like animals others like blind evolved hyper intelligent post human beings.

Cyrene, I don’t think you’ve disproved my hypothesis. I think you’ve proven the causal relationship that goes “reading → (poor vision + faster reading)”, which my proposal doesn’t contradict. I’m just proposing the further causal relationship “poor vision → faster reading”. And for that relationship, genetic influences would be one of the primary operators, at least in the kind of study that would be necessary to test the hypothesis.