The Phonological Loop and Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad as components of Working Memory regarding Reading Speed

[Gleeson13]

From what I understand about Working Memory, based upon Baddeley’s
Model, is that it is composed of the Central Executive, the main
system which regulates cognitive processes, and two slave systems
(disregarding the later added episodic buffer), the Phonological Loop
and the Visuo-Spatial Sketchpad, pertaining to auditory and visual
stimuli respectively. Tests involving auditory and visually presented
information simultaneously, known as dual-task paradigms, showed
little drop in performance when compared with single task conditions,
suggesting that the slave systems operate as independent channels
which feed the Central Executive and do not impede one another. It
naturally follows that when a dual-task taxes only one slave system,
performance is dropped.

This brings me to the task of increasing reading rates:

A major obstacle faced when trying to increase reading speed (wpm or
words per minute) is the natural process of subvocalization, which is
when every word is read internally. Assuming that every single word
that is read is subvocalized, this means that wpm is reduced to the
readers own speaking speed. Of course in reality many experienced
readers will partake in only partial subvocalization, where words such
as ‘of’, ‘and’ or ‘the’ are not subvocalized.

In order to better eliminate this subvocalization, I propose a dual-
task paradigm be used, one that presents two different sentences, one
visually and the other auditory, simultaneously. Then the user will be
asked to submit a written recall following presentation. Of course
because this is intended to increase reading speed the visual
component will be of the highest importance, the auditory component
merely acting to facilitate the other’s development by distracting the
user from using subvocalization. However there could certainly be the
added benefit of better auditory recall through a honed phonological
loop. Not to mention the potential for better reading recall as well.

Let me know what you guys think

P.S. Obviously the sentence is neither the minimum nor the maximum
here, I would imagine this format could be adjust to things as little
as words and theoretically as big as paragraphs.

[Closed]

The episodic buffer concept plays a big role in dual-task paradigms.
Nelson Cowan and Candice Morey have a good line of studies examining
binding (stimuli that have a visual-spatial and verbal component) in
WM. Are you talking about having people recalling both sentences, or
just ignoring the auditory sentence? In the case of recalling both
sentences, I would expect recall to for each to drop sharply when
doing both as opposed to just one or the other (there's a Cowan and
Saults study similar to this). In general, having people store
auditory and visual information simultaneously reduces recall accuracy
compared to either input mode individually. If they're just ignoring
the auditory sentence, visual sentence recall should still suffer
(i.e. irrelevant speech effect).

If you want to stop people from subvocalizing, you could have them
repeat "the" over and over while reading. There's plenty of room for
someone to argue that subvocalization hasn't been stopped completely,
but there are a few recent studies by Klaus Oberauer that seem to
suggest people don't "stuff in" rehearsal.

There is some evidence that in certain conditions verbal information
given before visual-spatial information can be maintained without
greatly (or at all?) impacting recall of the visual-spatial
information.

Could be an interesting experiment, though. I like the idea of having
people read sentences rather than individually presented words or
colored squares, as reading is something people do all the time (I
need to do more colored squaring..). However, I always pictured
subvocalization as improving reading comprehension. Do you see
suppressing subvocalization as increasing reading speed and recall?
How would you measure reading speed?

[Gleeson13]

I intended for both sentences to be remembered, because if the
auditory sentence can be ignored then it wouldn't play as strong a
role as it taking up the phonological loop. Basically I wanted a
reading memory test that would tax the visuo-spatial sketchpad and I
figured an auditory sentence that needed to be stored in the
phonological loop would force the visually presented sentence to be
retained in the sketchpad. I thought about the articulatory
suppression method but I figured this was much more akin to dual n-
back, which obviously requires that both stimuli be retained.
Concerning subvocalization as improving reading comprehension I am
not sure, but am aware of many speed reading "schools" and "methods"
the emphasize eliminating it in order to reach reading speeds near
1000wpm (words per minute). Reading speed itself would not be measured
in this test, I am only assuming that by using the protocol one would
decrease or eliminate subvocaliztion and thus reading speed would
increase naturally.

[Closed]

I think I read a similar claim in a speed reading text once. It
basically argued that because subvocalization is limited to the rate
at which you overtly articulate, and you can more-or-less intuit that
you're subvocalizing when you read, then by subvocalizing limits your
reading speed to your rate of articulation (or somewhere near there).
Then the idea follows that you might be able to suppress
subvocalization and increase reading speed ( / rentention?). However,
since articulatory suppression almost always reduces recall of verbal
material (and sometimes visual), and simultaneously encoding verbal
and visual material definitely leads to interference, it seems
unlikely that suppressing subvocalization will increase reading
comprehension. Also, considering just having sentences play while
reading a sentence will reduce recall accuracy for the visual
sentence, it seems unlikely that having to also remember them would
make things better. I wish--1000wpm would be nice!

The idea those books follow (at least the one I just outlined) seem to
be purely speculative and at odds with the evidence. Baddeley has a
good review paper called something like Working Memory: Looking Back
and Looking Forward, which might have some good directions. It would
be interesting to run tests on one of the author's of speed reading
books. If anyone has articles on something like that, I'd love to
read them!

[Mike]

I'm not entirely sure but I think that better readers and fast readers, but also some dyslexic people (dyslexics who were adept at reading--most dyslexics are not), read without sub vocalizing.

most dyslexics seem to have problems with reading in childhood and some people proposed it's because they don't sub vocalize (for some reason they have trouble with sub vocalization) --> but some dyslexic who read well develop a different technique where they don't subvocalize yet understand well what they read. 

I remember reading a study showing what part of the brain dyslexics used while reading, and that they weren't sub-vocalizing (no activation of the sub vocalizing part of brain activated during reading).

==

personally I don't think I sub vocalize very much. and when I read out loud I simply don't understand what I read. maybe that sub vocalization would also impedes reading comprehension in the same way.

btw --> who feels that reading out loud also impedes comprehension? this probably applies to most people! 

it's possible that sub-vocalization doesn't impede reading the same way reading out loud does, simply because reading out loud requires even more brain resources to be mobilized and diverts attention away from comprehension. maybe that sub vocalization doesn't divert attention as much while helping comprehension in some weird way.

==

I'm testing to see if I'm a true sub-vocalizer or not, by pronouncing a word while reading. it's probably not indicative of anything, but... it's definitely annoying and impedes comprehension a lot.

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