I’d heard that this is, to some extent, impossible, because everybody subvocalizes when they read. Wikipedia supports this, but I guess the goal is to minimize subvocalization rather than to eliminate it completely?

“Micro-muscle tests suggest that full and permanent elimination of subvocalizing is impossible.”

I know this is true for me. If I press the tongue to the roof of my mouth while reading, I can’t stop the muscles from moving very slightly as I read.

Sometimes I wonder how many things we've "proven" because our studies aren't large enough to observe all the edge cases. I sometimes wish I could contact the researchers and volunteer myself as a counter-example.

I haven't hooked myself up to electrodes and measured nerve response, but as far as I can tell I don't subvocalise when I read. I can also turn off my internal monologue; I don't have to hear the words in my head as I read them though I typically do.

It's hard to avoid subvocalizing when you're thinking about avoiding it. It's like not thinking about the pink elephant.

I feel like that experiment would be easy to contaminate..

Sometimes if I'm stuck in speech/subvocalizing mode it can take awhile to get out of it.

I think the easiest way to tell if I'm subvocalizing or not by checking my current reading speed. Subvocalizing can slow things down.

Also I think I'm more liable to subvocalize during fiction, with lots of dialogue involved. Acting out the characters in my head slightly.

I tried this when reading Ready Player One (I counted to eight in my head to stop vocalizing). I did read it much faster (in fact, faster than my partner who is a native English speaker/reader). I cannot vouch for how much I remember of the book though. I think it's less, because I remember watching the movie thinking "oh, right, that's what happened" about a major plot part. That's never happened with other books that I first read, then watched the movie/series adaptation of.

Also, that way you can read alot faster, you just scan all words in a sentence and let your brain handle the translation of visuals directly to concepts.

For me it's a little bit of a struggle to read like that, I need to count in my or use my inner monologue otherwise to accomplish that, otherwise my reading slows down automatically. I'm sure you can train both ways of thinking.

Hrm... I'll have to try it. When I speed read I shut down the internal monologue, but if someone was talking to me I'm skeptical I'd be able to read effectively still, but maybe I'm being too negative.

I'll give it a try.