Most people treat reading speed like a fixed trait. Something you either have or you don't, decided somewhere back in grade school and never revisited since.
But reading speed isn't fixed. It's a combination of trainable skills working together: how efficiently your eyes move across a line, how much you can hold in mind while you read it, and how quickly your brain processes what it just took in. Change those pieces, and reading speed changes with them.
That's what a training study conducted with students at Brigham Young University (BYU) set out to test. Over six weeks, researchers tracked what happened when participants trained these underlying skills directly, in short sessions, twelve times total. The results are worth walking through in detail, not just the headline number, but what it actually took to get there and how they hold up against the broader research on whether reading speed can really be improved at all.
What the study measured
The study followed 37 students over a six-week period, each completing 12 training sessions. Rather than asking participants to simply "read more" or "read faster," the training targeted the specific cognitive skills that reading depends on: processing speed, working memory, and visual tracking.
Researchers measured two things throughout: raw reading speed in words per minute (WPM), and comprehension, scored as a percentage. They also calculated an "effective reading speed" (speed multiplied by comprehension) because a faster reader who understands less isn't actually reading better. This measure exists specifically to catch that tradeoff, if it happens.
The results, by the numbers
On average, participants started the study reading at 298 WPM with 47% comprehension. By the end of the 12 sessions, the same group averaged 949 WPM, a 332% increase, with comprehension up to 82%.
Once you factor in the comprehension gain, effective reading speed moved from about 141 to 779 words per minute. That's roughly five and a half times higher than where participants started.
Comprehension went up alongside speed instead of dropping. That's the detail worth sitting with, and it runs against a lot of what's commonly said about speed reading, which brings up a fair question.
Why speed and comprehension improved together
There's a well-known and well-supported line of research that's skeptical of speed reading generally. A widely cited 2016 review in Psychological Science in the Public Interest concluded that claims of dramatically faster reading with maintained comprehension are largely overstated, and that most commercial speed-reading programs mainly teach people to skim rather than process text faster.
That's a fair challenge worth answering directly. This study isn't a speed-reading trick, and it isn't asking anyone to skim. It's a different, more recent line of research on training the underlying skills that reading depends on.
A 2013 study published in Nature Communications trained adult readers over eight weeks through sessions that gradually increased the demands on reading speed. Reading speed improved significantly, and comprehension held up, with gains still measurable six months later. The researchers concluded that fluent reading depends partly on how quickly the brain processes visual and language information, and that this can be trained directly rather than being fixed.
Working memory plays a role here too. A meta-analysis in Psychonomic Bulletin & Review (Daneman & Merikle, 1996), covering 77 studies and over 6,000 participants, found that the ability to actively hold and process information while reading, not just store it, is one of the strongest predictors of comprehension.
So the research points to something more specific than "speed reading works" or "it doesn't." Training the processing speed, working memory, and visual tracking that reading depends on can move both speed and comprehension in the same direction. Skimming tricks that only change how fast your eyes move across a page, without touching those underlying skills, are a different thing. That's the version the 2016 review was, and still is, right to be skeptical of.
What this means if you want to read faster
A few things stand out from how the study was structured:
- Consistency mattered more than intensity. Participants trained in short sessions, 12 times over six weeks, rather than occasional long ones.
- Comprehension was tracked the whole way, not just checked at the end. That's part of why the gains held up instead of reflecting a speed/comprehension tradeoff.
- The training targeted specific skills (processing speed, working memory, visual tracking) rather than reading volume or skimming technique alone.
Every reader starts from a different place, and this study reflects group averages, not a promise about any one person's results. But it's a useful benchmark for what training these skills consistently, over time, can look like.
How Infinite Mind fits in
Infinite Mind's brain training exercises are built around the same categories of skills this research measured: reading speed, comprehension, processing speed, and working memory, in sessions designed to fit into a few minutes a day.
This isn't a claim that every user will see the same numbers the BYU students did. Individual results vary, and this app is a training tool, not a medical device or treatment. You can see the full research behind the app on our Our Science page, including how the training method itself is designed on the Our Science: Method page.
Infinite Mind is free to download in the App Store and Play Store. Search "Infinite Mind" to get started.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't speed reading a myth?
The research is genuinely skeptical of programs that teach skimming or claim you can read thousands of words per minute with full comprehension, and that skepticism is well earned. What this study measured is different: training the specific cognitive skills reading depends on, over weeks, with comprehension tracked the whole time.
Can reading speed actually be trained, or is it fixed?
Reading speed is made up of trainable skills, including processing speed, working memory, and visual tracking. Multiple independent studies, including the ones referenced above, suggest these skills respond to consistent, targeted practice.
Does reading faster hurt comprehension?
Not necessarily. Skimming-based shortcuts tend to trade comprehension for pace, but training that targets the underlying cognitive skills, rather than just pace, can move both speed and comprehension in the same direction.
How long does it take to see a difference?
In this study, participants trained across 12 sessions over six weeks. Timelines vary by person, but consistent short sessions over several weeks is the pattern the research points to, rather than a single long session.
What is "effective reading speed"?
It's a measure that combines raw reading speed with comprehension (speed × comprehension), used to check whether someone reading faster is still actually understanding what they read.
Curious what your own reading speed looks like? Infinite Mind is free in the App Store and Play Store.
