Reading - Hard Copy vs Digital.

  So many companies are now offering digital versions of their textbook and other materials.  I linked to digital copies of the textbook and student journal for students who wanted to work on the actual work but I began wondering if the brain operated any differently between reading hard copy and digital.

Reading is a skill that has only been around for about 5000 years, give or take a few.  When a student is first taught to read, they have to retrain certain neural pathways to carry out reading.  Even before students learn to read, their brain areas associated with language, understanding, and vision are all engaged.  This happens when students listen to a story being read, they visualize the events throughout the story and the area that allows the visualization to happen is the same area students use when reading at a later age.

One study discovered that the more screen time a student has, the more decreased connectivity the brain undergoes in regard to the part of the brain associated with reading.  In other words, the brain is less able to coordinate areas of the brain associated with reading and those responsible for language, vision, attention, and concentration.  On the other hand, the more a student actually reads, the better their brain is able to coordinate areas associated with reading, language, vision, attention, and concentration.

Furthermore, neurologists have discovered that your brain uses different parts of the brain when reading an actual book vs reading the same material on a digital device.  They have found that the more time you spend reading on a digital device, the more likely your brain will engage in "non-linear" reading.  This practice is where your eyes skim a page or dart around a web page.  You no longer read line by line.

Unfortunately this leads to a loss of deep reading where we no longer immerse ourselves in our reading because we are concentrating on the material.  It is also the process you want to do when you read dense text such as a legal document or a contract.  When we read on a screen, we are not as focused on reading and are more likely to skim through everything.  In addition, it leads to increased stimulation due to all the available reading material.  One way to counter this is to have students spend a certain amount of time every day, reading a physical copy of a book or magazine.

Another study indicates that when students have digital copies of textbooks, they are more likely to be distracted by the device itself because it is easier to multitask on the device. Furthermore, students tend to multitask and it takes them longer to read the material.  It also appears that more students enjoy reading when using books than those who read the same book on a device.  In addition, when parents read a story to children using a device, children seem to recall fewer details than if the parents read the same story from a book.

It also appears that students who read from a physical book tend to have higher comprehension scores than those using a digital device unless the digital book was carefully constructed so it supports reading, then the comprehension scores are about the same.  One interesting result coming out of one study is that students who use digital devices seem to better at answering concrete questions but do not have good note taking skills while students who read books are better at answering abstract questions requiring inferential reasoning.

The bottom line when reading a physical book is that it allows us to slow down so we are better able to practice deep reading, practice critical analysis and thinking, develop empathy and so much more.  Since digital device is here to stay there are strategies we can teach students to help them develop more linear reading habits and I'll cover some of those on Friday.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.