Exploring different kinds of reading
For those of you who read eBooks, a recent study conducted in Norway at Stavanger University may be of interest, as they found that people tend to absorb less information when reading on a Kindle compared to paper books. The study gave 50 readers a short 28-page story written by Elizabeth George to read; half used a Kindle and half read a paperback. The readers were then tested on aspects such as objects, characters, and settings found in the story.
The question of how technology changes our way of reading is a problem that has been looked at before. Anne Mangen, lead researcher on the study, based her predictions on a previous study, which compared responses on reading an upsetting short story on paper vs. an iPad.
“In this study, we found that papers did report higher on measures having to do with empathy and transportation and immersion, and narrative coherence, than iPad readers,” said Mangen.
What is interesting about this is that, in her recent study comparing reading on a Kindle versus that of a paper book, Mangen found that the Kindle readers performed “significantly worse” on plot reconstruction, which was determined by testing readers knowledge on the placement of 14 events in the right order. The researchers propose that this may be due to the difference in tactile feedback that paperback books provide, which offers a sense of progress and sensory offload that aids your visual progress in reading.
In a study conducted by her last year, Mangen looked at 72 Norwegian 10th grade student’s comprehension ability on reading PDF’s compared to paper. The study, similarly, found that the “students who read texts in print scored significantly better on the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts digitally.”
With the digital culture that we find ourselves living in, where we read electronically everyday through books, class notes, news articles, and more, studys like Mangen’s highlight an important concern for people today. Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Professor of Child Development within the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development at Tufts University, voiced her own concern of society’s ability to “deep read” in an article in the Nieman Reports.
“Whether an immersion in digitally dominated forms of reading will change the capacity to think deeply, reflectively and in an intellectually autonomous manner when we read is a question well worth raising,” wrote Wolf. “But it isn’t one I can answer now, given how early we are in the transition to digital content.”
The concern for changing times is not an old one, as Wolf reminds us, noting how Socrates believed literacy would delude the young into believing that they have obtained a “crux of knowledge.” Wolf’s remarks on deep reading are thought-provoking because her points touch upon the discussion today on people’s ability to absorb information online, especially in the news. More often, we are seeing headlines becoming even more important, trying to draw attention to a society that has been criticized for having a shorter attention span. Having quick bits of information is becoming more preferable over reading longer pieces of work. In lectures, often times we are repeatedly told to research further, question everything, and read deeply into what we are looking at. This is sound advice, especially when we consider Mangen’s studies.
However, there are also many benefits for reading electronically, compared to paper, such as environmental considerations, ease of transport, or cost. The convenience of electronic versions is an important factor to consider, and probably will continue to be preferable, as society plows forward into the digital age.
Regardless, research on these differences will hopefully develop even further, as the research team led by Mangen could not determine why readers scored significantly lower. These further studies, perhaps, will then give us a better insight into the mechanisms behind the differences, and will be an interesting thing to keep in mind when deciding whether to read on paper or not.