Speed Reading and IQ: Are Fast Readers Smarter?

Speed reading does not raise IQ, and no controlled study has shown that it does. The research on reading itself shows a firm speed-accuracy trade-off: according to a major review of eye-movement science, readers are unlikely to go from about 250 words per minute to 500-750 while understanding the text as well as they did at their normal pace.

The question of whether fast readers are smarter has a more interesting answer. Skilled readers do tend to score higher on reasoning and language tests, but their speed grows out of language skill, and courses that push speed directly do not build that skill. This page covers how fast people really read, what eye-movement studies say about speed-reading claims and apps, how reading speed relates to intelligence, and what helps if you want to read faster.

There is no evidence that it can. Speed-reading programs have been sold since at least 1959, when Evelyn Wood introduced her Reading Dynamics course, and they have come back in recent years as smartphone apps. Yet none of the studies reviewed here tested whether training changes intelligence scores, and the experiments that do exist look at reading speed and comprehension.

The best recent test of a commercial program is small. Marina Klimovich, Simon Tiffin-Richards and Tobias Richter assessed 30 German-speaking undergraduates before and after they used an app-based speed-reading training, a "metacognitive" training that taught them to monitor their own reading, or no training. Both trained groups read faster than the control group, though not by as much as the app claimed. Comprehension did not differ between the three groups. Eye-tracking showed fewer and shorter fixations in measures of later word processing. The authors concluded that the gain likely reflected greater awareness of one's own reading process, and they did not see it as a change in basic reading behavior. The metacognitive training, which contained no speed drills, also raised reading speed.

An IQ test measures reasoning, working memory and processing speed across many kinds of items. Even a genuine increase in words per minute would touch only a narrow slice of that.

Popular claims about reading speed tend to start from inflated baselines. Marc Brysbaert analyzed 190 studies with 18,573 participants and estimated that the average adult reads English silently at 238 words per minute for nonfiction and 260 for fiction. Most adults fall between 175 and 300 words per minute for nonfiction. Reading aloud averages about 183 words per minute.

Brysbaert noted that these estimates are lower than the numbers often cited in scientific and popular writing, and that reading rates are in line with the maximum speed at which people can listen to speech. Rates are lower for children, older adults and people reading English as a second language, and there are reliable individual differences within each group. Those group differences are worth remembering whenever someone compares reading speed across ages or languages and treats the result as a measure of intelligence.

Reading feels smooth, but the eyes move in quick jumps called "saccades," separated by brief stops called "fixations," with occasional backward movements called "regressions." Keith Rayner's reviews of this research describe the "perceptual span," the limited window around each fixation from which a reader takes in useful information. Many speed-reading programs promise to widen that window or to eliminate fixations and regressions, and those promises run into the basic mechanics of vision and language.

In 2016, Rayner, Elizabeth Schotter, Michael Masson, Mary Potter and Rebecca Treiman published a review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest on whether speed reading can work. Their conclusion was that there is a trade-off between speed and accuracy. If thorough understanding is not the goal, speed reading or skimming lets a reader get through a text faster with moderate comprehension. The way to read faster while keeping comprehension high is to practice reading and become a more skilled language user, for example through a larger vocabulary, because language skill is at the heart of reading speed.

Many apps use "rapid serial visual presentation" (RSVP), flashing one word at a time in the same spot so the eyes never have to move. Two lines of research suggest the eye movements being removed are doing useful work:

• Regressions support comprehension: Schotter, Randy Tran and Rayner masked each word as soon as readers' eyes moved past it, so rereading was impossible. Comprehension suffered, and the effect was not limited to ambiguous sentences.

• Faster RSVP costs comprehension: Dina Acklin and Megan Papesh compared normal static text with RSVP at 700 and 1,000 words per minute. Static text produced better comprehension than either RSVP speed. Slower RSVP gave better verbatim recall, while the faster speed was associated with better inferential comprehension, so the costs depend on the kind of understanding being measured.

Acklin and Papesh also found that participants' working memory capacity did not predict comprehension scores in their RSVP study. Our article on what working memory is explains why that capacity usually matters for complex tasks.

Somewhat, on average, though the link runs mainly through language ability. In a classic study, Mark Jackson and James McClelland compared university students who read faster with students who read more slowly. In their first experiment, the faster readers had faster reaction times on all of the reaction-time tasks and were more accurate in verbal and quantitative reasoning, short-term auditory memory and spoken-language comprehension. Two measures accounted for nearly all of the differences in reading ability: how well students understood spoken passages and how fast they could match letters. That fits Rayner's later conclusion that skill with language drives reading speed.

Studies of children show a similar pattern. Verena Johann, Tanja Könen and Julia Karbach tested 186 schoolchildren with an average age of about 9 on working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, Raven's matrices, reading speed and reading comprehension. Higher fluid intelligence was associated with both faster reading and better comprehension, while working memory and inhibition were linked to reading speed. In adults, Peter Borkenau and colleagues found that how people read short sentences aloud was a particularly strong single predictor of their intelligence test scores among 15 videotaped episodes, a finding that also bears on whether talking quickly signals intelligence.

The direction of the link is the hard part. Reading a lot builds vocabulary and background knowledge, and both feed reading speed and verbal test scores. Our article on whether reading books raises IQ covers that question. Several confounds also shape any comparison:

• Education and practice: years of schooling and reading habits raise both reading fluency and test scores.

• Age: children and older adults read more slowly on average, according to Brysbaert's review, so mixed-age samples can show links that reflect age.

• First language: Brysbaert's review also found slower rates for people reading in a second language, which reflects language experience.

• Reading difficulties: a specific difficulty such as dyslexia, which Rayner's 1998 review discusses among individual differences in eye movements, can slow reading. That is one more reason reading speed alone is a poor stand-in for IQ.

So a fast reader is somewhat more likely to have strong verbal ability. A slow reader is not necessarily less intelligent, and training someone to move their eyes faster does not give them the language skill that made fast readers fast in the first place.

The evidence-based advice is modest. Rayner and colleagues recommend practicing reading and building language skill, especially vocabulary. Skimming is a legitimate strategy when the goal is the gist, as long as you accept lower comprehension. Klimovich's study suggests that simply paying attention to your own reading process can produce some gain in speed without hurting understanding, at least in the short term.

Reading speed is also worth separating from reading for learning. Slowing down to reread a hard passage is the kind of regression that Schotter's experiment showed supports understanding.

No study has shown that it does. Speed-reading research measures reading speed and comprehension, and the training effects found so far are modest and tied to reading habits.

On average they tend to have stronger language and reasoning skills, and in children higher fluid intelligence goes with faster reading. The link runs mainly through vocabulary and language comprehension.

About 238 words per minute for silent reading of English nonfiction and 260 for fiction, based on 190 studies. Most adults read nonfiction at 175-300 words per minute.

Apps that flash one word at a time can push speed up, but comprehension drops compared with normal reading. Preventing readers from looking back at earlier words also hurts understanding.

Not with full comprehension of ordinary text, according to the 2016 review by Rayner and colleagues. At that pace a reader is skimming, which can capture the gist but loses detail.

Speed reading and IQ are related only indirectly. Fast readers tend to have stronger language skills and somewhat higher reasoning scores, but speed-reading training does not raise intelligence, and large speed gains come at the cost of comprehension. Reading widely and building vocabulary is the slower and more reliable path to reading faster. To see how your reasoning ability compares, try a professionally developed IQ test.

1. Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4-34. [doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267](. doi.org

2. Klimovich, M., Tiffin-Richards, S. P., & Richter, T. (2023). Does speed-reading training work, and if so, why? Effects of speed-reading training and metacognitive training on reading speed, comprehension and eye movements. Journal of Research in Reading, 46(2), 123-142. [doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12417](. doi.org

3. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. [doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047](. doi.org

4. Rayner, K. (1998). Eye movements in reading and information processing: 20 years of research. Psychological Bulletin, 124(3), 372-422. [doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372](. doi.org

5. Rayner, K. (2009). Eye movements and attention in reading, scene perception, and visual search. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 62(8), 1457-1506. [doi.org/10.1080/17470210902816461](. doi.org

6. Schotter, E. R., Tran, R., & Rayner, K. (2014). Don't believe what you read (only once): Comprehension is supported by regressions during reading. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1218-1226. [doi.org/10.1177/0956797614531148](. doi.org

7. Acklin, D., & Papesh, M. H. (2017). Modern speed-reading apps do not foster reading comprehension. The American Journal of Psychology, 130(2), 183-199. [doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.130.2.0183](. doi.org

8. Jackson, M. D., & McClelland, J. L. (1979). Processing determinants of reading speed. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108(2), 151-181. [doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.108.2.151](. doi.org

9. Johann, V., Könen, T., & Karbach, J. (2020). The unique contribution of working memory, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, and intelligence to reading comprehension and reading speed. Child Neuropsychology, 26(3), 324-344. [doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2019.1649381](. doi.org

10. Borkenau, P., Mauer, N., Riemann, R., Spinath, F. M., & Angleitner, A. (2004). Thin slices of behavior as cues of personality and intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 86(4), 599-614. [doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.86.4.599](. doi.org

Hero image: Book 06474, by Nevit Dilmen, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.