Subject: Re: Mastery Inflation

From: t.s.baguley_at_...
Date: Tue, 4 Jul 2000 09:49:07 +0100


> From: David Dunham <dunham_at_...>
>Literacy in the RW is a good example of why competent characters
>don't need a mastery.
>
>First off, most people sometimes miscomprehend what they read -- they
>do fail. Secondly, most of the time we are all self-respecting
>readers, and don't need to make a roll. Thirdly, most of the time we
>are reading neatly printed material in a relatively reasonable script
>(rather than sloppily hand-written Chinese characters) -- it's as if
>the writing were augmented.
>
>I would say a mastery in reading represents speed-reading ability, or
>perfect recall or comprehension of what was read.

I'd disagree. RW literacy (as opposed to ancient world) literacy is a mastered skill for most Western literates. We can read without speaking out loud, tracing the words on the page ,without taking particular care, we have access to at least two separate reading routes (grapheme phoneme conversion or whole word pattern recognition) etc. (Mind you I should have specified reading rather than literacy - as most literate people are poorer at composition).

In terms of rules mechanics we don't misread unless there are _substantial_ adverse circumstances (time pressure, poor resolution/quality of script). Of course you can reverse this and say we also have many bonuses, but I don't think that is a fair overall reflection (one reason we are poor at reading sloppy characters is that we are specialized and learn with printed characters).

Thom

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