Subvocalization: should you silence it?

Hearing the words in your head as you read is normal, it helps, and trying to switch it off costs understanding.

The short answer

No. Inner speech is how skilled readers normally read, and understanding of hard text drops when readers are made to suppress it (Hardyck & Petrinovich, 1970; Slowiaczek & Clifton, 1980; Daneman & Newson, 1992). Train the faster route from spelling to meaning instead: on easy text, the voice then has less to do.

What subvocalization is

Subvocalization (also spelled subvocalisation) is the voice you hear in your head when you read silently. It isn’t a bad habit left over from learning to read. It holds words in memory while a sentence comes together, which is why it matters most when the sentence is hard.

What happened when people tried to stop it

In the 1960s, readers were trained with feedback from sensors on their throat muscles. The muscle activity dropped quickly, but it came back when the text got harder (Hardyck, Petrinovich & Ellsworth, 1966; Hardyck & Petrinovich, 1970).

When readers are made to suppress the inner voice, understanding of hard text drops (Slowiaczek & Clifton, 1980; Daneman & Newson, 1992). Silencing it doesn’t free up speed. It takes away a tool.

Is it what makes you slow?

Not on its own. Reading speed is limited by how fast the brain recognises words and builds them into meaning (Rayner et al., 2016). Skilled readers get a word’s meaning from its spelling before they have fully heard it, and that route gets faster with practice and vocabulary (Share, 1995; Ehri, 2005).

How much does sound pull on you?

A classic experiment asked readers whether a word was a flower. Some said yes to rows, because it sounds like rose (Van Orden, 1987). The pull is strongest with brief, masked flashes, and weakens as spelling takes over (Coltheart, Patterson & Leahy, 1994).

Some pull is normal in everyone: the aim is less, not none. Gulp’s Sound traps drill measures it as sound pull, how much more often sound-alike traps fool you than look-alike words that sound different, so plain carelessness doesn’t count.

What to train instead

  • Recognising words at a glance. Brief, masked flashes answered with a picture, so nothing ever has to be said. Masking makes the flash the real viewing time, the standard method in word-recognition research (Forster & Davis, 1984).
  • Spelling over sound. Practise with words that sound like something they aren’t, and watch the pull shrink.
  • The inner voice as a test, not a target. Repeating “la-la” keeps the inner voice busy, the standard lab method (Baddeley, Lewis & Vallar, 1984). It shows how much you recognise without the voice. It isn’t a way to read.
  • Checking understanding. Whatever you practise, measure it with questions on real passages. Take the reading speed test.

Limit: the inner voice will always be there, and on hard text it comes back. That’s the system working, not failing.

Sources

  • Baddeley, A. D., Lewis, V., & Vallar, G. (1984). Exploring the articulatory loop. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 36(2), 233-252.
  • Coltheart, V., Patterson, K., & Leahy, J. (1994). When a ROWS is a ROSE: Phonological effects in written word comprehension. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A, 47(4), 917-955.
  • Daneman, M., & Newson, M. (1992). Assessing the importance of subvocalization during normal silent reading. Reading and Writing, 4, 55-77.
  • Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167-188.
  • Forster, K. I., & Davis, C. (1984). Repetition priming and frequency attenuation in lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10(4), 680-698.
  • Hardyck, C. D., & Petrinovich, L. F. (1970). Subvocal speech and comprehension level as a function of the difficulty level of reading material. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 9, 647-652.
  • Hardyck, C. D., Petrinovich, L. F., & Ellsworth, D. W. (1966). Feedback of speech muscle activity during silent reading: Rapid extinction. Science, 154, 1467-1468.
  • 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.
  • Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151-218.
  • Slowiaczek, M. L., & Clifton, C. (1980). Subvocalization and reading for meaning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 19, 573-582.
  • Van Orden, G. C. (1987). A ROWS is a ROSE: Spelling, sound, and reading. Memory & Cognition, 15(3), 181-198.
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