Patent US 5,147,205

A computerized tachistoscope presents information in a transitory, flashed, manner in order to mandate student-user attentiveness, retention, and learning. Particularly in teaching reading successive groups of words, typically of three words each, are transitorily successively presented in positions actually occupied by the word groups within a block of text. Required reading is unidirectionally forward while each successive fixation of the eye must assimilate multiple, and not individual, words. Particularly in teaching spelling a word image is flashed and a student-user is quizzed to spell the word, which word is no longer visible. In teaching reading the base rate of the transitory presentation of successive groups of words is intermittently automatically accelerated, normally about 10% for the successive presentations of many successive word groups, in order to force the student-user to sprint, and to thereby extend his or her reading rate. The latency time duration of the presentation of certain word groups are automatically extended, typically by 50%. The word groups for which display time is extended have keywords, punctuation, and/or length in excess of a predetermined number, normally twenty-six, characters.