Xref: utzoo alt.hypertext:796 comp.cog-eng:1906 comp.graphics:16995 comp.multimedia:261 comp.software-eng:5218 soc.culture.japan:7040 sci.lang:9522 sci.lang.japan:3640
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!lgc.com!cl
From: cl@lgc.com (Cameron Laird)
Newsgroups: alt.hypertext,comp.cog-eng,comp.graphics,comp.multimedia,comp.software-eng,soc.culture.japan,sci.lang,sci.lang.japan
Subject: Re: Images vs. Text
Message-ID: <1991Apr2.191453.26206@lgc.com>
Date: 2 Apr 91 19:14:53 GMT
References: <10292@pitt.UUCP> <1991Apr2.162821.21318@leland.Stanford.EDU>
Sender: usenet@lgc.com
Distribution: na
Organization: Landmark Graphics Corp., Houston, Tx
Lines: 40
Nntp-Posting-Host: forest.lgc.com

In article <1991Apr2.162821.21318@leland.Stanford.EDU> rick@hanauma.stanford.edu (Richard Ottolini) writes:
			.
			.
			.
>>that is,  that people can scan information presented
>>in a visual image-based form FASTER than in a plain
>>textual form.
>
>I don't know if this is relevant to your inquiry, but Chinese speed readers
>claim peak speeds about five times that of alphabetic readers.  The fastest
>I heard from Chinese in soc.culture.china was 50,000 characters per minute
>and for English 5,000 words a minute.  On the average a Chinese word
>is two characters.
>Chinese characters are more visual than alphabetic words.  However, alphabetic
>speed readers see the whole word at time, rather the characters, so they can
>claim to be reading icons too.  Chinese characters have the same horizontal
>width in contrast to alphabetic words, so readers of the later may slow down
>in predicting where the next word is.

Funny:  I just came across this claim for the first
time a couple of days ago, andin a completely dif-
ferent context.  What do professional linguists
say on the subject?  It surprised me a LOT when I
saw it, because rapid reading can only be of what
I'll call "internalized" tokens; if you're treating
them as icons, then you're doing time-consuming
cognitive processing.

Is the whole curve shifted?  Do "average" Chinese
and Japanese literates read five times as fast as
their Latin-alphabet counterparts?  Why hasn't this
come out in all the fuss about national models of
public-school education (that is, why hasn't it
come to my attention)?  This seems like a subject
that admits good, interesting experiments; have
they been done?
--

Cameron Laird				USA 713-579-4613
cl@lgc.com (cl%lgc.com@uunet.uu.net)	USA 713-996-8546