Physical or Digital Reading

When looking at books and ebooks it is often like comparing apples and oranges and pineapples. Somethings are just too different. Take this study that also used ebooks with lots of bells and whistles. For reading comprehension we just need text, even adding pictures may change the effect. There is a similar issue when they use digital text that you can't go back and look at which makes it very different than a paper test. Then too there is the practice effect. I always wonder in these studies if they would change if they only used children that had extensive digital reading experience. Anytime you give people a new medium that they have to work with it changes the system (try driving with someone new to stick shifting - the driving is the same, that shift makes a huge difference). I'm sure that the data analysis is good, but it is also backward-looking situational.

Studies: Physical books aid reading comprehension

Children perform better on reading comprehension tests after reading a paper book -- rather than a digital book -- according to a review by European researchers of 39 studies that took place in the US, UK, Argentina, Canada, Jordan, Israel, the Netherlands and Thailand. Researchers found that e-books with higher numbers of "bells and whistles" unrelated to the story harmed students' reading comprehension.

Full Story: The Hechinger Report (3/22)

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