Storybooks On Paper Better For Children Than Reading Fiction On
Computer Screen, According to Expert
ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2008) — Clicking and scrolling interrupt our
attentional focus. Turning and touching the pages instead of clicking
on the screen influence our ability for experience and attention. The
physical manipulations we have to do with a computer, not related to
the reading itself, disturb our mental appreciation, says associate
professor Anne Mangen at the Center for Reading Research at the
University of Stavanger in Norway. She has investigated the pros and
cons of new reading devices.
Mangen maintains that reading on a screen generates a new form of
mental orientation. The reader loses both the completeness and
constituent parts of the physical appearance of the reading material.
The physical substance of a book offers tranquility. The text does not
move on the page like it does on a screen.
"Several experiments in cognitive psychology have shown how a change
of physical surroundings has a potentially negative affect on memory.
We should include this in our evaluation of digital teaching aids. The
technology provides for a number of dynamic, mobile and ephemeral
forms of learning, but we know little about how such mobility and
transience influence the effect of teaching. Learning requires time
and mental exertion and the new media do not provide for that," Mangen
believes.
"We experience to day a one-sided admiration for the potentials in the
technology. ICT is now introduced in kindergarten without much
empirical research on how it influences children's learning and
development. The whole field is characterized by an easy acceptance
and a less subtle view of the technology," the researcher says.
Would you warn against the use of digital teaching material?
"Critical perspectives on new technologies are often brushed aside as
a result of moral panic and doomsday prophecies. I will not warn
against it, but I think there is generally little reflection around
digital teaching material. What we need, is a more nuanced view on the
potentials and limitations of all technologies – even of the book.
Very often important discussions about technology and learning have a
tendency to reduce a complex field to a question about being for or
against," Mangen explains.
The development of digital media leads to a need for more
sophisticated concepts of reading and writing and a new understanding
of these activities.
"Many people say that children read less and not so well as earlier.
With which technology do they read less? What types of text do they
read less well? What conceptions of reading are we talking about,"
Anne Mangen asks.
Even if children and young people do not read as many novels in book
form any more, one may still argue that they actually read more than
before. Most of what they do on a computer or on their cell phones, is
exactly reading and writing.
"Swedish researchers believe we understand more and better when
reading on paper than when we read the same text on a screen. We avoid
navigating and the small things we don't think about, but which
subconsciously takes attention away from the reading. Also texts on a
screen are often not adapted to the screen format. The most important
difference is when the text becomes digital. Then it loses its
physical dimension, which is special to the book, and the reader loses
his feeling of totality."
Mangen has mainly been looking at hypertext stories. These stories
exploit the multimedia possibilities of a computer and use both
hypertext, video, sound, pictures and text. They are constructed in
such a way that clicking one's way around them comes close to a
literary computer game.
As a researcher, Mangen is interested in the physical aspect of
reading and applies theories from psychology and phenomenology linked
to the relationships between motor functions and attention in order to
highlight the difference between reading a novel and a hypertext
story.
"The digital hypertext technology and its use of multimedia are not
open to the experience of a fictional universe where the experience
consists of creating your own mental images. The reader gets
distracted by the opportunities for doing something else," Mangen
says.
