A new study which found that readers using a Kindle were \u201csignificantly\u201d worse than paperback readers at recalling when events occurred in a mystery story is part of major new Europe-wide research looking at the impact of digitisation on the reading experience.<\/p>\n
\n
The study, presented in Italy at a conference last month and set to be published as a paper, gave 50 readers the same short story by Elizabeth George to read. Half read the 28-page story on a Kindle, and half in a paperback, with readers then tested on aspects of the story including objects, characters and settings.<\/p>\n
Anne Mangen of Norway\u2019s Stavanger University, a lead researcher on the study, thought academics might \u201cfind differences in the immersion facilitated by the device, in emotional responses\u201d to the story. Her predictions were based on an earlier study comparing reading an upsetting short story on paper and on iPad. \u201cIn this study, we found that paper readers did report higher on measures having to do with empathy and transportation and immersion, and narrative coherence, than iPad readers,\u201d said Mangen.<\/p>\n
But instead, the performance was largely similar, except when it came to the timing of events in the story. \u201cThe Kindle readers performed significantly worse on the plot reconstruction measure, ie, when they were asked to place 14 events in the correct order.\u201d<\/p>\n
The researchers suggest that \u201cthe haptic and tactile feedback of a Kindle does not provide the same support for mental reconstruction of a story as a print pocket book does\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you read on paper you can sense with your fingers a pile of pages on the left growing, and shrinking on the right,\u201d said Mangen. \u201cYou have the tactile sense of progress, in addition to the visual \u2026 [The differences for Kindle readers] might have something to do with the fact that the fixity of a text on paper, and this very gradual unfolding of paper as you progress through a story, is some kind of sensory offload, supporting the visual sense of progress when you\u2019re reading. Perhaps this somehow aids the reader, providing more fixity and solidity to the reader\u2019s sense of unfolding and progress of the text, and hence the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mangen also pointed to a paper published last year, which gave 72 Norwegian 10th-graders texts to read in print, or in PDF on a computer screen, followed by comprehension tests. She and her fellow researchers found that \u201cstudents who read texts in print scored significantly better on the reading comprehension test than students who read the texts digitally\u201d.<\/p>\n
HT:\u00a0 Nathan Martin<\/p>\n
I find myself doing almost all of my reading-for-pleasure on Kindle these days.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t work so well for my scholarly reading (English professor that I am), which I have to do with traditional books.<\/p>\n
Does this study ring true with your experience?\u00a0 (For me, contrary to these findings, fiction works well with Kindle, as the story unfolds as on an electronic scroll.\u00a0 Nonfiction, though, is more difficult, since I need to page back and forth to get the full effect of the argument or the information, something hard to do on a Kindle.)<\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The London Guardian reports on a study of reading on a Kindle as compared to reading a traditional book.\u00a0\u00a0 Readers of the paper version performed significantly better when it came to reconstructing the chronological order of incidents in the plot.\u00a0 The story cites another study that found 10th graders had significantly higher comprehension rates when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,29,44],"tags":[330,1235,1850],"class_list":["post-19726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-media","category-technology","tag-books","tag-kindle","tag-reading"],"yoast_head":"\n
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