Audio versus Visual recognition speed and Kindle impact

I use the text to speech setting on my iphone to read kindle ebooks out loud (transmitting sound to hearing aids) and it works very well - I can read text at same time as I am listening but I do not have to totally concentrate on reading.

What is interesting is the difference in speed.

I can read a whole page in 50% or less of time that listening to the spoken. I tried to increase the spoken word speed by 25% (minimum increase) and the audio was very difficult to follow and was just totally unnatural.

I have always been a fast reader - I sort of scan a paragraph rather than reading each word.

I decided to investigate further and came across this interesting article



Perhaps the key point is (from above text)

"This gap exists because reading allows the brain to process multiple words at the same time, jumping ahead in a sentence and forming meaning quickly. In contrast, spoken language is linear—listeners must wait for words to be spoken in sequence, limiting processing speed."

What I found with listening and reading at same time is I would read so far ahead whilst listening and sometimes lost my place (brain trying to interpret two sets of data not immediately related I guess). This is a bit like subtitles on a movie - you often see them out of kilter with the spoken word and the subtitles become a distraction rather than an aid.

I even tried deliberately reading each word rather than the more intuitive scanning but then I found I was not listening to the words.

I found increasing font size so less words on page i.e. I could only read ahead a little bit and the overall simultaneous reading and listening experience was more comfortable, as I did not get lost.

The only thing that I find irritating now is when some words are split between two "pages" on kindle e.g. deaf - ening. The text to speech software reads both halves as a separate words. This is more a Kindle design issue breaking words across pages . I found if you use left justification on text rather than having each line full width, the number of split words is much reduced.

I also tried to use continuous text scrolling but the text reader carries on when it reach bottom of screen, and you have to manually scroll down. If you use the normal swipe to turn page mode, the text to speech software automatically turns to the next screen when it gets to the end of the screen.

As an aside, this mode of kindle speech encourages me to use my exercise walking frame more as I can listen to books at same time, and I get less bored (music does not do it for me). I tried watching videos but the found them too difficult to concentrate on unless viewed on a large screen to reduce shaking effect.