The part
not a reading skill or logical thinking problem
is related to the common way people talk about “knowing” something or having learned it or having a skill. This makes it sound like, because he was able to get it right on rereading, that means he knows it – he has the skill.
But, in short, a good model is that there are 3 stages to learning something:
- Being able to do it at all.
- Being good at it consciously, slowly, with high effort.
- Being good at it subconsciously, quickly, with low effort (automatization).
It’s routinely ambiguous which stage someone has finished when they are said to have learned something. It can be 1, 2 or 3. In this case, getting it right when consciously rereading indicates having learned it up to phase 1, but doesn’t give clear information about 2 or 3.
It’s common that people get around half way through level 2 (and they may also be up to a quarter done with level 3), stop learning, and think they’ve learned it. And then the terminology we use to discuss it – like “not a reading skill … problem” – can make it sound like they finished level 3. But not finishing level 3 learning would be a type of reading skill problem.
- You just make mistakes sometimes, kind of like how you were thinking about arithmetic errors earlier in this topic.
- You were upset, defensive, biased or something along those lines.
A different way to characterize the possibilities for accurate, logical reading skill is:
- He learned it to level 1 or 2 but not 3.
- He learned it to level 1, 2 or 3, but emotions, biases or something else can interfere with and override the skill.
These two points parallel the two I quoted but add precision/clarity about what I think is an important distinction.