Why do we remember more by reading in print vs. on a screen?
Is comprehension the same whether a person reads a text onscreen or on paper? And are listening and viewing content as effective as reading the written word when covering the same material? The answers to both questions are often “no,” as I discuss in my book “How We Read Now.”
Print versus Digital Reading
When reading texts of several hundred words or more, learning is generally more successful when it’s on paper than onscreen
- Both grade school students and college students assume they’ll get higher scores on a comprehension test if they have done the reading digitally, yet, they actually score higher when they have read the material in print before being tested
- The discrepancies between print and digital results are partly related to paper’s physical properties
- People often link their memory of what they’ve read to how far into the book it was or where it was on the page
Podcasts and Online Video
Due to the increased use of flipped classrooms, many school assignments that previously entailed reading have been replaced with listening or viewing
- 32% of U.S. faculty were replacing texts with video materials, and 15% reported doing so with audio
- 40% of respondents who had changed course requirements over the past five to 10 years reported assigning less reading today
Maximizing mental focus
When adults read news stories or transcripts of fiction, they remember more of the content than if they listen to identical pieces
- Researchers found similar results with university students reading an article versus listening to a podcast of the text
- Students do more mind-wandering when listening to audio than reading
- The relationship between listening and reading skills flips as children become more fluent readers
- Research on learning from video versus text echoes what we see with audio
- Digital texts, audio and video all have educational roles, especially when providing resources not available in print
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