Reading - do you read fast, slow, average?

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What has being female got to do with it?

The ratio of hyperlexic males to females is something like 1:20-30.
Asperger's is only 1:4.

Statistically, it's really improbable that a given female who reads extremely quickly is hyperlexic.
And Asperger's in my family.

I can read almost instantly if the text is formatted properly.

Use Gawk http://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/gawk.html a simple text processing language to format text in a way you can read faster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK_(programming_language)

I could read over 100 pages an hour in 7th grade but I haven't checked since then so I might read faster now

When young I read non fiction at about 400 pages oer hour. I worked to slow down and do about 100 to 200 now. I find fiction more difficult.

I have difficylty with long words and sometimes cannou pronounce even if I have heard it said. I will ususlly halt the internal voice at these and hear a grumble.

I tend to rearrange wording to conventional form.

I was hyperlexic when I was younger, and I'm female with AS. I don't listen to a lot of that stat talk - in most cases, females are under-reported anyhow. I'm still technically hyperlexic but I don't have as strong of traits - I'm more balanced now. I also had eidetic memory, although now that I'm in my mid-30's it's not as sharp as it used to be. Pity.

Anyhow, being hyperlexic doesn't mean you can read fast. It is how you read - it's a very shallow, concrete sort of comprehension that allows for very fast memorization, but that doesn't mean the hyperlexic understand what he or she has read. By the time I was 7 I could list numerous countries, states and provinces, horse, cat and dog breed, different types of airplanes and jets, the system of animal classification and all the bones and major muscles in the human body, just from the books I read. However that doesn't mean I understood all that data. I just could regurgitate. As I grew and developed better comprehension and critical thinking skills, my ability to memorize large amounts of data from reading lessen, but at least what I read I actually understood.

As for my reading speed, it really depends on what I'm reading. If I'm not reading for comprehension, I can speed read pretty fast, anywhere from 200 to 400 pages per hour. Of course, as it was pointed out, speed reading isn't exactly thorough reading. I read the "gist" of paragraphs when I speed read. I have a very refined, even intuitive sense of what is and isn't important, I follow my own grammatical and syntaxical "pointer" system for clues of what's important. So I mainly read what is important and gloss, even skip over the rest. If I enjoy a writer's style, and want to read more thoroughly, then I read slower, maybe 60-90 pages a hour.

If I read for comprehension if depends on how familiar I am with the topic and how difficult the subject or writing is. Dense, efficient writing that jams a lot info into a few sentences, or writing that uses a lot of difficult jargon or techincal words requires slower reading. History texts I can usually read at a good pace, about 60 pages a hour. Science or medical texts a little slower - 30-40 at the most. Philosophy and theology is probably the hardest, because you don't have to just comprehend, but you have to critically think about what you've read to truly understand it. So I often stop preiodically and reflect when reading those kinds of texts. My reading pace comes to crawl when reading most phil or theo - 10-20 pages an hour. Hell, I've spend over an hour dwelling on a single paragraph at times.

I read 2461 words per minute on the superchallenge...I didn't feel like taking the other tests.

I read faster than average, but my speed also varies, for instance: I may speed up in one part but completely slow down on another part.

Hm but Hyperlexia isn't an officially diagnosed condition... plus what do professionals know anywhow?

I was hyperlexic as a child and so were many females with AS and ASDs I have heard/read of.

Oh, I thought it was an official diagnosis. Not demeaning the condition, of course.
You learn something every day...

Well I am sure people diagnose it but it's not in the DSM or ICD.

I am not normally anal about the DSM so I should really have expressed that better, sorry! Anyway my point is as long as there are no set rules for diagnosing something, I would be sceptical about claims of percentages and gender distribution. (And even if it's in the DSM you don't always know which rules are used, same with AS, some diagnose it with language delay, some diagnose autistic people who can now speak OK as AS with hindsight etc.)

I put average, even though I read faster than the spoken word. I have a reputation for reading very fast, but it's really that I read a lot. My cousin once sat me down and handed me a book. We read side by side. I was happy as a clam. My cousin kept saying "What page are you on?" The third time we were on the same page, she yanked the book away and announced that I don't read fast. End of reading session. I had no idea what was going on.

Reading - every 2 weeks I get about a dozen books from the library. I read them all. Fast or slow, I don't know.

That would have irritated me no end. The interruptions. Plus I would guess that your cousin was trying to prove that you didn't read as fast as she did, but was proved severely wrong. (Did she tell you which page she was on? Did she submit to comprehension questions on what she said she had read?)

Worst of all though - she took away the book you were reading, and enjoying, before you finished it!

I think I have only failed to finish one or two books (series of books, even) in my life. For me not to plough on to the end, even if I don't like the book(s), is almost unthinkable


That is "voracious" reading, I'd say. Maybe not particularly fast, as you say.

Yup, yup. Yes, it was an ego thing she was doing. She told me what page, never occurred to me she might have fibbed. Comprehension tests - nah, we were 12 years old, reading two Nancy Drew books.


I never forgot it! She was rich and had lots of books and we had none. She didn't like to read at all. And she wouldn't lend them.


I'm like that too. I'll finish almost anything.

I read very fast when feeling emotionally able to do so (during bouts of depression I tend to read slower) and when not distracted.