I was 15% faster with Bionic reading, but I noticed that my comprehension suffered somewhat. I still got all the review questions right, but I sometimes had to re-read sentences or phrases and didn't have that problem as much with the normal text.
My assumption is that I'm able to scan the words better with BR, but my eye gets pulled along too fast and I'm reading without comprehending.
have you considered implementing a false control (i.e. putting in a badly implemented bionic reading version and serving that to a random number of people to see whether people also report speed increases with "bad bionic reading"?)
i know a significant number of people here are probably already familiar with what bionic reading is, but still, could be an interesting control.
yeah i acknowledged that in the experiment design discussion
> We recognize this is clearly not a gold standard, double-blind RCT. Researcher and participant alike knew what Bionic Reading claims to achieve. We simply did not have time to (1) develop a mock Bionic Reading placebo that, for example, might bold the middle of the word instead of the beginning and/or (2) find a set of test subjects who are blissfully offline and unaware of this viral sensation. That said, we controlled for what we could and we think we've already gathered some fairly compelling evidence.
Also 23% faster with BR but I enjoyed reading that way less. As with yourself, I suspect that maybe I put pressure on myself to read faster for the BR.
As the article says, a better comparison may be to have a fake version of BR as the control.
Curious what results people here got. I got 23% faster with BR but I couldn't tell if I was just trying harder.