French students remember the order of events in a story worse when they read it on a Kindle e-readers than when they read it in a paper book.
This is one of the results of a new study that the Norwegian researcher Anne Mangen and the French scholar Jean-Luc Velay has carried.
Remembered order only half as good on Kindle
Mangen and Velay let students read a novel by the English writer Elizabeth George, who is behind the figure Inspector Lynley, known from the BBC series.
– Half of the students read the book reader Kindle DX. The other half read the same short story on paper, in a paperback book, says Anne Mangen to forskning.no.
– We made notes where we gave 14 important events in the novel, and gave them to the students in random order . So we asked the students to add the patches in the order they appear in the story, she continues.
The result was that Kindle readers proceeded only half as good as the paper readers. Mangen think this may be the opportunity to move physically in a book.
This physical, tangible action provides a physical and visual, mental experience of the order of events and the progress of the story.
As good emotional empathy
The survey gave many more results than the perception of the order. There was a broad survey of many aspects of reading, both intellectual, emotional, and how the reading happened physically, for example scrolling and other gestures.
– Then we will later move on to more specialized studies, said Mangen .
Surprisingly enough, did not get Kindle readers underperform bokleserne in most other areas, such as emotional empathy.
This is contrary to the results of similar studies Mangen previously made with colleagues in Canada, also referred to forskning.no.
– A possible explanation is that the story we used in the experiment in Canada, was much more tragic and upsetting. It was also presented to some of the participants as a true story, but the short story of Elisabeth George is far less emotionally charged and is hard to take as anything other than fictional entertainment literature, said Mangen.
Just as good perception of the content
Nor, when it came to perceive the content in general, this study confirmed earlier findings on poorer results on screen, including the Norwegian schoolchildren.
Mangen believes that it is hardly a general response to the reading on tablet and Kindle is full of reading on paper.
– This will depend on many factors, including the type of text being read, the purpose of reading and also readers’ experiences of reading on paper and screens. All this remains to examine empirically, said Mangen, who is to chair a European network to determine precisely (see fact box).
She points out that only two of the 25 students in the Kindle group in the study were experienced Kindle users. The rest of the participants in the experiment read most of the paper.
– One of the things we want to continue, is a study in which experienced users of tablets compared with others, said Mangen.
Links:
Reading Literature on Screen: A Price for Convenience? New York Times, 13 August 2014.
Readers absorb less on Kindles than on paper, study finds, The Guardian, 19 August 2014
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