A study in 2009 done by Geoffrey Duggan and Stephen Payne of the University of Bath tracked the eye movements of people who were given a set amount of time to read through a large amount of information on a series of linked website pages. Using this study, the researchers were able to draw some conclusions about the effective use of skimming and scanning techniques, and how much information is gained and remembered while reading in this manner. The results show that it’s possible to locate and retain important data even at a high speed of scanning, and that much of the process is unconscious.

In a prior study, this unconscious process was named satisficing (Reader and Payne, p. 264). This is a term that describes the point at which a reader is “satisfied” with the amount of data they have gathered from a particular block of text – generally a paragraph, but also applied to evaluation of a page. When readers have a particular goal in mind, they skim through a paragraph of text just until they decide one of two things: (1) if the data they need are in the paragraph, so they need to stop and read more closely; or (2) if the paragraph is not immediately useful, so they can skip ahead to the next one.

Notice that although this is a mostly-unconscious process done while reading, it’s important to have a good idea of what you’re looking for before you begin the skimming and scanning process. Your eyes and your brain will be primed to look for key terms and important words in the text, which will help the underlying decision-making process of whether to slow down momentarily, or speed ahead.

Duggan, G. B., and Payne, S. J. Text skimming: The process and effectiveness of foraging through text under time pressure. Journal of Experimental Psychology 15 (2009).

Reader, W. R., and Payne, S. J. Allocating time across multiple texts: Sampling and Satisficing. Human-Computer Interaction 22 (2007).