Tunnel vision & functional blindness: A weak reader is, of course, often in exactly this condition. To this reader the use of context and prediction will be especially supportive and may be appropriately used. In many instances, however, weak readers do not use ‘non-visual’ information well in support of their reading. They ‘bark at print’, in Marie Clay’s wonderful phrase. They restrict themselves to persistent attempts to recognise single words by obsessively focussing upon them in isolation, and belabouring them, rather than using the friendly clues around the word or in their own heads. They feel (have been taught, perhaps) that reading should come solely from page to meaning, with any support other than pure bottom-up word recognition skill being somehow immoral or fraudulent. Many feel, to boot, that ‘proper’ learning is supposed to be painful; they uneasily feel that anything which alleviates this pain is somehow degenerate. They suspect any method seeking to avoid such pain, and any teacher suggesting such a thing. They feel that seeking or using ‘extraneous’ support shows how useless they really are (and how complex ‘literacy’ is and how clever everybody who uses it fluently must be). It can be difficult to convince such a student that it is not only permissible but highly desirable (and common practice among fluent readers) to enjoy support wherever it may be found, and that the rockiest route is not always the best route. Convinced, though, they must be.

Smith introduces the useful concept of ‘tunnel vision’ in this context. He considers an experiment. If a line of letters is briefly flashed before you, to either side of the dot you have been asked to fixate at the centre of a screen, then different amounts of assimilation, of ‘reading’, will occur depending on the letters, but also on you. If the letters are apparently random [say, BILER HAR FEM HJULER IALT] then, although you will be able to report that you have indeed seen a line of letters, you will, perhaps, only have read, and be able to recall, the central FEM. Had the letters been randomly assorted English words [say, BUILD HAT FIG BORDER WHAT] then you will be able to report that they were English words and will have assimilated perhaps HAT, FIG & BORDER. Had the letters made up a moderately sensible utterance [say, BILLY HAD FIVE OTHER HATS] you might have read the whole statement.

In conditions one, two and three above the visual information in each case was similar, approximately the same number of letters in much the same patterns. Our ability to ‘read’ them varied, however. This variation can be attributed to non-visual information within the reader. It can be further demonstrated by pointing out that in condition one a Danish speaker might have read the whole line of letters because they amount to a (fairly) sensible utterance in the Danish language (cars have five wheels altogether). In case one the ability to capture the same visual information varied enormously, but this was due to the difference between readers of it, and nothing else. Danes caught it easily, English speakers with difficulty.

Smith (2004) writes that a monoglot English speaker would have ‘tunnel vision’ in condition one. They would be in a condition of ‘information overload’, with a plethora of items to manage and a shortage of time in which to do it. Under such conditions we may all experience tunnel vision, where our focus reduces to a tiny number of items. Not speaking Danish, we may only have been able to capture, perhaps, F, E and M in condition one, for example. These very few items fill our perceptual capacity. In this condition it is as if we can only see the world through a tunnel, bit by tiny bit. A weak reader is in this condition much of the time. Not only is a weak reader in this condition, so is an anxious reader. If a reader is made, or becomes, apprehensive about reading they may ‘focus in’ very hard on the detail; narrow their field of view, real and virtual. This will blank wider textual and contextual clues as well as their own general or specific knowledge. The reading will become even more difficult and make them even more anxious, so that they focus even harder on ever more minute detail. In a short time they may reach a state Smith calls ‘functional blindness’. Certainly they may entirely cease to make useful progress in any direction through the use of their eyes. Their breadth of vision, actual and mental, has narrowed catastrophically. This horrible, and personally corrosive, effect may be seen particularly when public reading is demanded of weak readers. (And see chapter seven on affect.)

Apparently, there is a way to catch monkeys which takes advantage of this mind-constricting effect, this application of mental blinkers. You chain a coconut shell to a tree trunk and put some peanuts inside it (these monkeys love peanuts). There is a hole drilled in the coconut shell which will just take a monkey’s extended hand but which is too small for a monkey’s clenched fist to pass. You hide and watch. A monkey arrives, notes the peanuts and squeezes his hand into the shell. At this point you yell and rush from hiding. The startled monkey panics and, with his fist closed round a peanut, is trapped. He is focused very intensely on a single aspect of his present reality. Of course, if he had time and peace he could see the wider picture and find a solution, he could perform to his true intellectual potential, but anxiety gives him tunnel vision, and catastrophic failure.