Original story published by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 22 January 2019.
COST Action Evolution of Reading in the age of digitisation (E-READ) have been featured in today’s edition of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung regarding the future of reading.
See the original article here (please note the article is in German, a translation is offered below).
We live in an era of ever faster and deeply poignant digitization. Digital technologies hold tremendous opportunities for the generation, use, storage, and transfer of information, and at the same time challenge a number of well-established reading practices. For four years, a group of scholars in reading, writing and publishing across Europe has been exploring the impact digitization on reading practice.
Paper and screen each require their own forms of processing. In the hybrid reading environment of paper and screens we live in today, we will have to figure out how to make the most of the benefits of paper and digital technologies in different age groups and with different goals.
Research shows that paper will continue to be the preferred reading medium for individual longer texts, especially when it comes to a deeper understanding of the texts and retention. Moreover, paper is the best vehicle for reading long informative texts. Reading long texts is invaluable for a range of cognitive achievements such as concentration, vocabulary building, and memory. Therefore, it is important that we preserve and promote the reading of long texts as one of several forms of reading. As screen reading continues to increase, we urgently need to find ways to facilitate the profound reading of long texts in screen environments.
Central findings:
Individual differences in skills, abilities, and dispositions provide different learning profiles that influence children’s ability to learn from digital or printed sources.
Digital texts offer excellent possibilities to tailor the text presentation to individual preferences and needs. Benefits in terms of understanding and motivation are evident where the digital reading environment has been carefully tailored to the respective readers.
However, digital environments also cause problems. When reading digital texts, readers are more likely to have greater confidence in their understanding skills than in reading printed texts, especially when under pressure, which in turn leads to skimming and less focus on the content of what has been read.
A meta-study of fifty-four studies, totaling more than 170000 participants, shows that understanding long pieces of information when reading on paper is better than reading on-screen, especially when readers are under time pressure. There were no differences in narrative texts.
Contrary to expectations regarding the behavior of “digital natives”, this inferiority of the screen to the paper has increased rather than decreased in recent years, regardless of age and prior experience with digital environments.
Our embodied cognition (which depends on the properties of our entire physical body, what we can learn, know and do) can contribute to differences between reading on paper and on screens in terms of understanding and keeping. This factor is underestimated by readers, educators and even researchers.
These findings are consistent with those in countries outside Europe.
In light of these findings, we give the following
Recommendations:
There is a need for a systematic and thorough empirical study of conditions that encourage or hinder learning and understanding when reading printed texts or in digital environments.
Students should be taught strategies that they can use to gain profound reading and reading experience on digital devices. It also remains important for schools and school libraries to continue to motivate students to read printed books and to allow time for them in curricula.