A fixation is a short pause — about a quarter of a second — that your eyes make to actually take in text. Your eyes don’t glide smoothly across a line; they jump and fixate 4–5 times per line on average.
Each fixation costs time, so reading faster means making fewer fixations per line by taking in more words at each stop. Widening your perceptual span with drills like Schulte tables is how you get there. Acceleread trains this directly.
