The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: the Science of Paper Versus Screens
Even millennials admit that whether you read on paper or a digital screen affects your attending on words and the ideas behind them.What are the implications for how we teach?
The digital revolution has done much to reshape how students read, write, and admission information in school. One time-handwritten essays are now word-processed. Encyclopedias take yielded to online searches. One-size-fits-all pedagogy is tilting toward personalized learning. And a growing number of assignments ask students to read on digital screens rather than in print.
Yet how much do we actually know most the educational implications of this emphasis on using digital media? In detail, when it comes to reading, do digital screens make it easier or harder for students to pay careful attending to words and the ideas backside them, or is at that place no difference from print?
Over the past decade, researchers in various countries have been comparing how much readers comprehend and remember when they read in each medium. In nearly all cases, at that place was substantially no difference between the testing scenarios. (See Baron, Calixte, & Havewala, 2022 for a review.) However, such findings demand to be taken with a grain of salt. These studies accept typically focused on captive research subjects, mostly college students who unremarkably are paid to participate in an experiment or who participate to fill up a course requirement. Enquire them to read passages and and then answer Sabbatum-mode comprehension questions, and they tend to exercise so reasonably carefully, whether they read on a screen or on newspaper. Under those conditions, it's non surprising that their functioning would exist consequent across platforms.
But the devil may prevarication in the details. When researchers have altered the testing conditions or the types of questions they ask, discrepancies have appeared, suggesting that the medium does in fact matter. For example, Ackerman and Goldsmith (2011) observed that when participants could cull how much time to spend on digital versus print reading, they devoted less to reading onscreen and had lower comprehension scores. Schugar and colleagues (2011) constitute that participants reported using fewer study strategies (such as highlighting, note-taking, or bookmarking) when reading digitally. Kaufman and Flanagan (2016) noted that when reading in print, report participants did improve answering abstruse questions that required inferential reasoning; by dissimilarity, participants scored improve reading digitally when answering concrete questions. Researchers at the University of Reading (Dyson & Haselgrove, 2000) observed that reading comprehension declined when students were scrolling every bit they read, rather than focusing on stationary chunks of text.
What about research with younger children? Schugar and Schugar found that middle grades students comprehended more when reading print than when using e-books on an iPad (Paul, 2014) — interactive features of the digital platform evidently distracted readers from the textual content. However, the aforementioned researchers observed that among K-6 readers, e-books generated a higher level of engagement (Schugar, Smith, & Schugar, 2013). Working with high schoolhouse students in Norway, Anne Mangen and her colleagues (2013) concluded that print yielded better comprehension scores. Mangen argues that print makes it easier for students to create cerebral maps of the entire passage they are reading.
For educators, though, the existent question is not how students perform in experiments. More important is what they do when reading on their own: Practice they take equally much fourth dimension reading in both media? Do they read as carefully? In short, in their everyday lives, how much and what sort of attending do they pay to what they are reading?
Questions about reading in a digital age
History is strewn with examples of people worrying that new technologies volition undermine older skills. In the late 5th century BC, when the spread of writing was challenging an before oral tradition, Plato expressed concern (in the Phaedrus) that "trust in writing . . . will discourage the use of [our] own memory." Writing has proven an invaluable engineering. Digital media have as well. These new tools make it possible for millions of people to have access to texts that would otherwise exist beyond their attain, financially or physically. Computer-driven devices enable us to aggrandize our scope of educational and recreational experience to include audio and visual materials, often on need. But as with writing, it'due south an empirical question what the pros and cons are of the erstwhile and the new. Writing is a vital cultural tool, only there is fiddling uncertainty information technology discourages retention skills.
When we recollect nigh the educational implications of digital reading, we need to study the issue with open minds, not brand presuppositions well-nigh advantages and disadvantages.
To help forrard this exploration, my own research has been tackling three intertwined questions about reading in a digital historic period. First, what practice readers tell united states directly about their print versus digital reading habits? Second, what else do readers reveal virtually their attitudes toward reading in impress versus onscreen, and what tin nosotros infer nigh how well they pay attention when reading in each medium? The third question is more wide-stroked: In the current technological climate, are we changing the very notion of what it means to read?
Students are more than likely to multitask when reading onscreen than in print — peculiarly in the U.Due south. where 85% reported multitasking when reading digitally, compared with 26% for impress.
I've been investigating these questions for well-nigh a half-dozen years, commencement with some pilot studies in the U.South. (Businesswoman, 2013) and continuing with surveys (between 2013 and 2015) of more than 400 university students from the U.S., Nihon, Deutschland, Slovakia, and Bharat. Participants were enrolled in classes taught past colleagues, or they were classmates of one of my enquiry administration. Everyone was between age 18 and 26 (mean age: 21). Nigh two-thirds were female and one-third male person. (For study details, see Baron, Calixte, & Havewala, 2017.) Though my study participants were university students, I doubtable that most issues at play are relevant for younger readers who have mastered the skills we would await of center-schoolhouse students and above. Employ of digital technologies is at present ubiquitous amidst both adolescents and young adults, and teachers at all levels are increasingly assigning due east-books (or online articles) rather than print.
The written report consisted of three sets of questions. In the commencement set, we asked students:
- How much fourth dimension they spent reading in print versus onscreen;• Whether cost was a factor in their pick of reading platform;
- In which medium they were more likely to reread;
- Whether text length influenced their platform selection;
- How probable they were to multitask when reading in each medium; and
- In which medium they felt they concentrated best.
In the next set up, nosotros asked what students liked most — and least — about reading in each medium. Finally, we gave participants the opportunity to offer additional comments.
Print versus digital reading habits
Hither are the primary takeaways of what students in the study reported in the outset set of questions about their reading habits:
Fourth dimension reading in print versus onscreen
Overall, participants reported spending about 2-thirds of their time reading in print, both for schoolwork and pleasure. There was consider-able variation across countries, with the Japanese doing the well-nigh reading onscreen. In considering these numbers, specially for academic reading, we need to keep in mind that sometimes reading assignments are just available in ane medium or the other, so students are not making contained choices.
Toll
More than than 4-fifths of the participants said that if cost were the same, they would choose to read in impress rather than onscreen. This finding was particularly strong for academic reading and especially high in Germany (94%). Students (and for that matter, K-12 school systems) oft cite price equally the reason for selecting digital rather than print textbooks. Information technology's therefore telling that if toll is removed from the equation, digital millennials usually adopt impress.
Rereading
Not anybody in the report reread — either for schoolwork or for pleasance. Among those who did, six out of 10 indicated they were more than probable to reread print. Fewer than two out of ten choose digital, while the remainder said both media were as likely. Rereading is relevant to the issue of attention since a second reading offers opportunities for review or reflection.
Text length
When the amount of text is curt, participants displayed mixed preferences, both when reading academic works or for pleasure. Still, with longer texts, more than than 86% preferred print for schoolwork and 78% when reading for pleasance. Preference for reading longer works in print has been reported in multiple studies. As Farinosi and colleagues (2016) observed, "If the text requires strategic reading, such as papers, essays, books, the newspaper version is preferred" (p. 417).
Multitasking
Students reported existence more likely to multitask when reading onscreen than in print. Responses from the U.S. participants were particularly stark, with 85% indicating they multitasked when reading digitally, compared with 26% for impress. The detrimental cognitive furnishings of multitasking are well known (e.chiliad., Carrier et al., 2015). We can reasonably infer that students who multitask while reading are less likely to exist paying shut attention to the text than those who don't.
Concentration
The most dramatic finding for this set of questions came in response to the query about the platform on which students felt they concentrated all-time. Selecting from print, calculator, tablet, due east-reader, or mobile telephone, 92% said information technology was easiest to concentrate when reading impress.
Paying attention to reading
Students provided open up-ended comments to the 2nd prepare of questions, which asked what they liked nigh and least about reading in print and onscreen. In these responses, students praised the physicality of print but grumbled that it was not easily searchable. They complained that reading onscreen gave them eyestrain merely enjoyed its convenience.
They also had telling things to say nearly the cerebral consequences of reading in hardcopy versus onscreen. Of all the "like least" comments about reading digitally, 21% were cognitive in nature. Nearly all these comments talked about perceived distraction or lack of concentration. U.Due south. students were peculiarly song: Nearly 43% of their "like to the lowest degree" comments about reading digitally concerned distraction or lack of concentration. When asked what they "liked most" about reading in print, respondents said, "It'southward easier to focus," I "feel like the content sticks in the head more easily," "reading in hardcopy makes me focus more on what I am reading," and "I experience like I understand it more [when reading in print]."
In their additional comments (the last question category), written report participants wrote almost how long it takes to read the same length text on the 2 platforms. One student observed, "It takes more than fourth dimension to read the aforementioned number of pages in print comparing to digital," suggesting that the mindset she brings to reading impress involves greater (and more time-consuming) attention than the one she brings to reading digitally. In fact, in an before airplane pilot study, one student griped that what she "liked least" most reading hardcopy was that "information technology takes me longer because I read more than carefully."
Unexpectedly, several students said reading in impress was boring. In response to the question of what they "liked least" about reading in print, one participant complained that "It becomes irksome sometimes," while another wrote, "it takes time to sit down downward and focus on the material." Common sense suggests that if students anticipate that text in print will be wearisome, they volition likely approach it with reduced enthusiasm. Diminished involvement sometimes translates into skimming rather than reading carefully and sometimes non doing the assigned reading at all.
Is the nature of reading changing?
The biggest challenge to reading intently on digital platforms is that nosotros largely utilise digital devices for quick action: Expect upward an address, send a Facebook status update, catch the news headlines (but non the meat of the article), multitask betwixt online shopping and writing an essay. When we become to read something substantive on a laptop or e-reader, tablet, or mobile phone, our at present-habitualized instincts tell us to move things along.
Coupled with this mindset is an evolving sense that writing is for the hither-and-now, not the long haul. Since written communication outset emerged (in different places, nether unlike circumstances, at unlike times), ane of its consistent attributes has been that it is a durable class of communication that one nosotros can reread or refer to. Today, a nexus of forces is making writing seem more ephemeral.
A recent Pew Research Center written report of news-reading habits (Mitchell et al., 2016) reported that among 18- to 29-twelvemonth-olds, 50% said they often got news online, compared with only five% who read print newspapers. While some of us salve print news clippings, few archive their online versions. Vast numbers of students choose to hire textbooks (whether digitally or in print), which means the volume is out of sight and not available for hereafter consultation after the semester ends. True, K-12 students have long been giving back their impress books at the cease of the year, and college students have commonly sold books they don't wish to keep. Merely my conversations now with students who are defended readers indicate they don't see their college years as the time to starting time building a personal library.
If cost is removed from the equation, digital millennials commonly adopt print.
What about public or school libraries? Increasingly, budgets are beingness shifted from print to digital materials. The iii primary motivations are infinite, cost, and convenience. To grow the collection, you don't need to build some other wing. Digital is (ordinarily) less expensive. And users tin can admission the collection whatever fourth dimension of day and anywhere in the world with only an internet connection.
All truthful. Only there are consequences. When I access a library book digitally, I find myself "using" it, not reading information technology. I make a quick foray to notice, for example, the reference I need for an article I'm writing, and and so I exit. Had I held the physical book in my hand, it might have taken longer to detect the reference, but I probably would take read unabridged paragraphs or chapters. Microsoft researcher Abigail Sellen has made a related observation. In studying how people perceive textile they read (or store) online, she says they "think of using an e-book, not owning an eastward-book" (cited in Jabr, 2013).
Savvy students are aware of how the calculator Find function lets them zero in on a specific discussion or phrase so every bit to reply a question they have been asked to write well-nigh, blithely dismissing the obligation to actually read the total assigned text. Using, not reading. The more we swap physical books for digital ones, the easier it is for students to swoop downwardly and cherry-pick rather than work their mode through an statement or story.
Finally, gimmicky digital applied science is altering the part of reading in education. Movie strips of old have been replaced by far more engaging (and educationally enriching) TED Talks and YouTubes, podcasts and audio books. The potential of these digital media is extraordinary, both considering of their educational richness and the autonomous admission they provide. Yet at the same time, we should be figuring out the right curricular balance of video, audio, and textual materials.
Implications for educators
The almost important lesson I accept learned from my inquiry on reading in print versus digitally is the value of asking users themselves what they similar and don't like — and why — about reading in each medium. Students are acutely aware of the cerebral tradeoffs that many perceive themselves to be making when reading on one platform rather than the other. The event is not that digital reading necessarily leads us to pay less attending. Rather, it is that digital technologies brand information technology like shooting fish in a barrel (and in a sense encourage us) to approach text with a different mindset than the one well-nigh of u.s.a. have been trained to employ while reading impress.
We demand to ask ourselves how the digital mindset is reshaping students' (and our own) understanding of what it means to read. Since online engineering science is tailor-made for searching for information rather than analyzing circuitous ideas, will the meaning of "reading" become "finding data" rather than "contemplating and agreement"? Moreover, if print is increasingly seen as boring (compared with digital text), will our attention spans while reading impress mostly diminish?
Conceivably, we might progressively abandon careful reading in favor of what has been called "hyper reading" — in the words of Katherine Hayles (2012), reading that aims "to conserve attention by quickly identifying relevant data so that only relatively few portions of a given text are actually read" (p. 12). To exist off-white, even academics seem to be taking less time per scholarly article, particularly online articles, than they used to (Tenopir et al., 2009). When information technology comes to using web sites, studies indicate (Nielsen, 2008) that on average, people are likely reading less than 30% of the words.
The consequence of sustained attention extends beyond reading onscreen to other digital media. Patricia Greenfield (2009) has observed that while television, video games, and the internet may foster visual intelligence, "the toll seems to be deep processing: mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection."
Returning to the physical properties of impress: If fewer young adults are building their own book collections and if libraries are increasingly going digital, will writing no longer be seen as a durable medium? Yes, we could always look up something again on a digital device, but do nosotros? If sound and video are gradually supplanting text as sources of education and personal enrichment, how should nosotros remember about the future role of text as a vehicle of cultural broadcasting?
Digital technology is withal in its relative infancy. Nosotros know information technology tin be an incredibly useful educational tool, simply we need much more research before we can depict firm conclusions about its positive and negative features. In the instance of reading, our first task is to make ourselves aware of the effect engineering potentially has on how we wrap our minds effectually the written discussion when encountered in impress versus onscreen. Our second job is to embed that understanding in our larger thinking about the role of writing as a means of communicating and thinking.
References
Ackerman, R. & Goldsmith, M. (2011). Metacognitive regulation of text learning: On screen versus on paper. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 17 (i), eighteen-32.
Businesswoman, N.S. (2013). Redefining reading: The impact of digital communication media. PMLA, 128 (ane), 193-200.
Baron, N.S. (2015). Words onscreen: The fate of reading in a digital world. New York, NY: Oxford.
Baron, N.Due south., Calixte, R.Yard., & Havewala, Thou. (2017). The persistence of print amongst university students: An exploratory study. Telematics & Computer science, 34, 590-604.
Carrier, L.Thousand., Rosen, Fifty.D., Cheever, North.A., & Lim, A.F. (2015). Causes, effects, and practicalities of everyday multitasking. Developmental Review, 35, 64-78.
Dyson, G.C. & Haselgrove, Yard. (2000). The effects of reading speed and reading patterns on the understanding of text read from screen. Journal of Research in Reading, 23 (2), 210-223.
Farinosi, 1000., Lim, C., & Curlicue, J. (2016). Volume or screen, pen or keyboard? A cross-cultural sociological analysis of writing and reading habits basing on Federal republic of germany, Italy, and the Great britain. Telematics and Informatics, 33 (2), 410-421.
Greenfield, P. Yard. (2009). Technology and informal education: What is taught, what is learned? Scientific discipline, 232 (5910), 69-71.
Hayles, Grand. (2012). How we call up: Digital media and contemporary technogenesis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
Jabr, F. (2013, April 11). The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screens. Scientific American.
Kaufman, 1000. & Flanagan, G. (2016). Loftier-low split: Divergent cerebral construal levels triggered by digital and nondigital platforms. Proceedings of the 2022 CHI Briefing on Human being Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY: ACM, pp. 2773-2777.
Mangen, A., Walgermo, B.R., & Brønnick, K. (2013). Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen: Furnishings on reading comprehension. International Journal of Educational Research, 58, 61-68.
Mitchell, A., Gottfried, J., Barthel, M., & Shearer, E. (2016, July 7). The modern news consumer: News attitudes and practices in the digital historic period. New York, NY: Pew Inquiry Center. world wide web.journalism.org/2016/07/07/the-modern-news-consumer
Nielsen, J. (2008, May 6). How little do users read? Fremont, CA: Nielsen Norman Group. www.nngroup.com/articles/how-picayune-do-users-read/
Paul, A.M. (2014, Apr ten). Students reading e-books are losing out, study suggests. New York Times.
Schugar, J.T., Schugar, H., & Penny, C. (2011). A Nook or a volume? Comparison college students' reading comprehension levels, critical reading, and study skills. International Journal of Technology in Didactics and Learning, 7 (2), 174-192.
Schugar, H.R., Smith, C.A., & Schugar, J.T. (2013). Teaching with interactive e-books in grades K-6. The Reading Teacher, 66 (8), 615-624.
Tenopir, C., Male monarch, D.Westward., Edwards, South., & Wu, L. (2009). Electronic journals and changes in scholarly article seeking and reading patterns. Aslib Proceedings: New Information Perspective, 61(i), 5-32.
Commendation: Baron, N.Due south. (2017). Reading in a digital age.Phi Delta Kappan 99 (2), 15-twenty.
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Source: https://kappanonline.org/reading-digital-age/
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