Your Brain on Ebooks: Is Retention and Comprehension the Same as for Print Resources?

The online environment "promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning," argues Nicholas Carr, who raises concerns about the long-term implications in The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brain, which was published in June. "The danger is you don't encourage people to think critically and, ultimately, you don't encourage them to think creatively." (Marklein, 2010, More May Not Be Better section, para. 2)

            There are surprisingly few research studies examining the difference in comprehension and retention when reading in print versus electronic formats. This may be due to the relatively recent explosion in digital reading options and adoption by the public. It also appears that many studies looking at the impact of this technology are currently taking place, although findings have not been published. However, available research paints a mixed, if not wary, picture of the role of eBooks in learning.

            Not all eBooks are created equal. Some electronic resources include only the text in digital form. Other eBooks include bells and whistles like hyperlinks, videos, animation, sound and music. According to Marklein (2010, More May Not Be Better, para. 1), a 2005 review by researchers at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, of 38 studies found "very little support" for the idea that all those links to additional information enrich the reader's experience. A 2007 study published in Media Psychology raised similar concerns about add-ons such as sound and animation.

            Distraction is often cited as one of the main hurdles when using eBooks. The options in eBooks can pull readers away from the text, not to mention the availability of the Internet at large, in most formats. As distractions increase, the opportunity for deep understanding decreases.“The attention span of children may be one of the main reasons why an immersion in on-screen reading is so engaging, and it may also be why digital reading may ultimately prove antithetical to the long-in-development, reflective nature of the expert reading brain as we know it.” (Wolf, 2009, Beyond Decoding Words section, para. 9)

            Print resources have a “spatial advantage” over electronic formats, according to Jones (2010). Information is organized in books in a fixed way that is easy to find again. Readers remember the location of a fact or quote by where it appears on the printed page. Electronic texts have pages that look the same, making retrieval more difficult.

            Gelernter (2009, The Book Made Better, para. 5) talks about another problem with electronic resources, the cheapening of the word.  “…you can practically see the text messages buzz around the room and bounce off the walls, each as memorable as a housefly; where the narrowing time between writing for and publishing on the Web is helping to kill the art of editing by crushing it to death. The Internet makes words as cheap and as significant as Cheese Doodles. The tools (as usual) are neutral. It’s up to us to insist that onscreen reading enhance, not replace, traditional book reading. It’s up to us to remember that the medium is not the message; that the meaning and music of the words is what matters, not the glitzy vehicle they arrive in.”

            Clearly, the jury is still out on eBooks and learning. It will be interesting to see what impacts and advantages become apparent as we examine eBooks from a future vantage point.

Jones, John. (2010) Ebooks and learning. Retrieved from http://www.dmlcentral.net/blog/john-jones/ebooks-and-learning

Liu, A., Aamodt, S., Wolf, M., Gelernter, D. & Mark, G. (2009, October 14) Does the brain like ebooks? The New York Times Retrieved from http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/does-the-brain-like-e-books/

Marklein, Mary Beth. (2010, August 10) Can college students learn as well on iPads, ebooks? USA Today Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-08-10-ebooklearning10_CV_N.htm