A very important research article concerning the relationship between perceptual span and reading rate in adults.

This article by a team led by Keith Rayner, one of the world's leading researchers in this field, should be read by all seriously involved in working with dyslexic adults and anyone interested in how we read.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3075059/

As in most research into reading, this looks at the reading performance of effective ‘fluent readers’. But it again reinforces the need for maximal parafoveal processing. Being able to process visually and hence phonologically, the characters in the direction you are reading.

The article refers to ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ readers.

The fast readers (reading over 258 wpm, with an average reading rate of 337 wpm with normally spaced fonts)

The slow readers (reading less than 258 wpm, with an average reading rate of 207 wpm with normally spaced fonts).

These must have been silent reading speeds, with I believe, most of the slow reading groups sub vocalising.

The slow reading group were unable to use of visual data more than one extra word in the direction of reading. Whereas the fast reading group were able to make use of 2, 3 or more words ahead.

Read the article. The evidence is very supportive of the model being developed here, which is mainly based on working for adults reading at an average speed of 134 words per minute, and very rarely over 160 words per minute. (See the previous post).

Think again about  of the relevance of particular numbers. 

For the slow readers, when they could only see the word they were reading,with no parafoveal visual information their mean reading speed dropped to that 160wpm again.  

For years, I used to have the number written large the wall where I was working. It always intrigued me.  So......

.......160 wpm is the mean reading speed if you can only visually/phonologically process one word at a time.

The majority of dyslexic adults, typically cannot process a whole word in one fixation. Research referred to in previous postssuggests this is likely to be associate to some extent with lack of phonological cues from parafoveal processing.

At least with the way text is usually presented.