From the range of people I’ve come across, the people who have the ability to speed read are generally intellectually gifted, but I suspect some of the influences may also be greater interest in topics which motivated them to read, so you’d also get ‘practice effect’.
In a literature search, I can skim through hundreds of abstracts potentially relevant to my profession in a few minutes to find useful references but that’s with an extensive vocabulary and wide knowledge & understanding in my fields. It’s a skill asset honed out of necessity during an extended period of time poverty but has impressed others in my workplace. Similarly, the books I read for leisure are areas in which I also have strong interest and knowledge. I wouldn’t be able to speed read content of unfamiliar topics. My husband is a radiologist, so he is well practised at viewing a large number of images simultaneously and synthesising information from everything within his visual field, so we only recently had a discussion on how he was surprised to discover that he can now ‘read’ a page of written information at a glance which is very similar to what I do during literature searches.
Our youngest, who developed a strong interest in etymology at a young age, is the real bookworm in our family and she has true speed reading ability. She doesn’t scan pages, she reads everything chronologically and remembers it all in great detail and I am impressed with how she gets through thick novels in single sittings.
