Slashdot Mirror
Research Suggests E-Readers Are "Too Easy" To Read
New research suggests that the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain "lazy." According to Neuroscience blogger Jonah Lehrer, using electronic books like the Kindle and Sony Reader makes you less likely to remember what you have read because the devices are so easy on the eyes. From the article: "Rather than making things clearer, e-readers and computers prevent us from absorbing information because their crisp screens and fonts tell our subconscious that the words they convey are not important, it is claimed. In contrast, handwriting and fonts that are more challenging to read signal to the brain that the content of the message is important and worth remembering, experts say."
This is quite possibly one of the stupidest things I have ever read. I'm regretting not reading it on my Kindle, so I could forget it quicker.
What does this have to do with E-readers beside trying to increase article hits? The effect of readability would be just the same for a printed sheet of paper. But I guess that would not be so interesting to read about...
TFA failed to mention that the bulk of the content found on the e-Readers surveyed was copies of the Twilight series and whatever's on O's list these days.
Somehow, I doubt it's the font that is making everyone stupid...
Blog,Twitter
Have these people been dipping into my stash again?
I write sci-fi for metalheads
I must have missed the slashdot headline where scientists deciphered how the "subconscious" works.
My reading comprehension score from grade school competency tests disagrees with you Mr. scientists. Though come to think of it, I don't remember what those stories were about. Dear god, I learned nothing in school because books are too easy to read!
I was gonna post a rebuttal, but my brain was too lazy for me to RTFA.
Text books have sharp fonts that are easy to read. No wonder I had trouble remembering stuff in school!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
And yet despite this supposed discovery the person put it out on a webpage which has to be read on a computer screen. I guess he didn't think his discovery was that important since we are all now going to forget it easier? Wouldn't it have been preferable to put scanned images of his handwriting instead?
Anyone who has ever worked in Information Design can tell you that paper, with it's stunning contrast ratios and 1200 dpi printing is a far more precise medium than screens. WTF?
I call bullshit on that research. Maybe the subjects for it were the hipsters that don't really have anything interesting to read but love to sit on the grass in popular parks to show-off their pseudo-intellectuality with an e-reader on their hands.
The study had 28 participants... and they were asked to remember species of aliens...
While this may be a sign that it's worth looking into the differences a font makes in learning, I'll wait until a bigger study comes out where participants were asked to read a more likely and involved subject matter like the history of the Ottoman Empire.
I have a feeling many participants will be less likely to read past the first chapter if it was written in Comic Sans.
There were two main criteria that he used for describing if something is easily forgotten or not: ease of reading visually and complexity of writing.
It seems as if he's advocating making fonts and such harder to read, so that we are more likely to remember what we read, regardless of whether what we are reading is some trashy novel or a manual that we need to know to save lives. This seems wrong. We should be remembering details from what we read based on the quality and importance of the writing, not the font.
While that is an interesting assertion I personally find that I remember equally well that which I read in tradition books as well as
content delivered via e-Reader or computer.
I don't feel that the medium by which the data is conveyed has any bearing over what ones brain would perceive as important or not.
For me, if it was not at very least an interesting topic to me, I would not be reading it in the first place. So, I enter into the reading
session with a mind set that the information is important or interesting.
That is merely my take on the topic.
-Chasm
I agree with Tool, this is pretty stupid.
Basically, the author points out that a researcher has discovered that, WOAH! when we have a hard time understanding/perceiving words we use more of our brain to help grasp it. He then wildly extrapolates that into the the conclusion that therefore we remember and understand better if we use more of our brain. Uhhh, not necessarily so. There is no data other than the author's own fuzzy recollections. Please ignore this, don't read it. Else, if you do, you will probably see that stupid sticks in your head better than anything you read on a Kindle or in handwriting.
Interesting contrast to my experience: I find black ink on paper (using standard TR font) easier to read than the lower contrast text on eReaders and monitors. Flat panel monitors have no detectable flicker like the old CRT monitors (even at high vertical refresh rates with no interleaving) - but their contrast is poorer.
In my case, the "tangible" aspect of turning physical pages seems to make the information stick better. Perhaps that's due to familiarity with the format.
gah, so wrong.
What it points to is that people need to read more challenging works. Something with new words or clever phrases.
Remembering a crappy sentence just because some ink is smudges, or that the font is blurry helps nothing.
On guy extrapolating research he doesn't seem to understand into his person experience means, exactly..nothing.
He likes books, and is just fishing for excuses that justifies his love of books.
Me? I have read a lot of books. I don't love books, I love good stories. The book is nothing, the story is everything.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When glyphs get too challenging to decipher, my brain just kicks back and says "to hell with it"
"Neuroscience blogger... found he..." "Researchers asked 28 participants..." fail
Even if true, I'd bet you a dollar it's learned preference and will be completely different in the coming years. I'd wager that the preference has to do with how we're taught the 'weight' of the printed word either in libraries from when we were children, or contextual learning, like ignoring the fine print in a drug ad. I'd also bet that a similar study would show that we forget things read in magazines more quickly than things read in books. And I bet we remember hardcover books more than softcover, etc.
In other words, the people studied put digital readers in a mental category of 'novelty item' today, and their brain de-prioritizes what they are reading accordingly.
They need a better study.
This sounds more like a story from there and less like a scientific research study. Even then, I can remember reading certain Slashdot stories from 3 years ago more than I can remember the plot outline of the Wheel of Time, which I started reading 2 years ago.
Does anyone else have a Kindle 3G + WiFi add on the right-hand side of this article? It almost seems as if they had an article about cigarettes causing cancer, Google would have a Marlboro ad there, too.
This is exactly why I've blocked telegraph.co.uk. Our #1 source for vague (but relevant) hypotheses hyped up and presented as facts.
...so do you remember the CAPTCHA phrase from those tickets you bought last week? I didn't think so...
Individuals must choose, decide their "essential" nature rather than having it given from some transcendent source.
As a coincidence I just read post on lifehacker on same topic. It contains more insight into problem. They say that different parts of brain are involved when reading harder to read text and thus resulting in better understanding or remembering of written. http://lifehacker.com/5733692/harder-to-read-fonts-may-improve-learning
... on ways to tell us to go outside more. When did science stop doing cool stuff like shooting rockets in space or write words with atoms and start sounding like my mom?
At University there were a couple of proffesors who wrote horrible mangled garbage, and I learned nothing on those subjects until I decided to sneak into a different class with different teachers for those subjects.
Also, I'm pretty sure my miopy did not do me any favors when looking at the chalkboard.
sponsored this research? I'd like to avoid them in the future.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
No pain, no gain? No problem, just use MS Comic Sans on it and the text will burn in your forehead for weeks.
We have trained our brains to be lazy and remember little of what we read on computer screens because there is little worth remembering being displayed on computer screens.
Wasted Collection pwns Comic Sans. It's so precious.
So using a not very rigorous study comparing Arial font vs Comic Sans and Bodoni fonts you can of course infer e-ink screens make you forget more. Of course you have to use the proper framing of statements to avoid being called on it. In fact Comic Sans triggers that one area of the brain that makes you remember things more, experts say. Some believe, that if you alternated using Comic Sans and Bodoni fonts your retention of all materials read could be massively higher than those read using less "Brain friendly" fonts such as Times New Roman, and Arial.
Paper bends, which makes the lines of text not straight and the lighting not even.
1. The text is much harder to read than regular ink on paper.
2. The text is much easier to read than regular ink on paper.
I'm glad the commentators of the world have been able to identify these two problems.
That said, yes, it's been observed in the past that harder to read text can produce stronger memories, but this is not necessarily a good tradeoff, depending on what you're reading and why.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Next on news: memory bits are too easy on computer's CPUs.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
All those years they made fun of me for running 2560x1600 on my 19" CRT, saying I was going to ruin my eyes because it was so hard to read. At least I remember everything I read over the years.
and people won't forget your message
I called it a mighty Sperm Whale, she called it Finding Nemo.
I have RTFA, but I've already forgotten it.
QED. ;^P
We already digitally add graininess, snow, and other effects to video images when we want them to look like older methods of video capture. If this is an actual problem (which I find doubtful), then within a few years you'll likely see companies adding mechanisms to introduce imperfections into the fonts of their e-reading devices. Either that, or they'll all just use Comic Sans, since there are few fonts that are more painful to read in today's marketplace.
Here's the actual study which describes this phenomenon.
I'm now switching my browser defaults to Arial so I can forget everything I read on Slashdot faster.
Assuming for the moment that they've found a real connection...
Why does this article single out E-readers? Doesn't everything there apply just the same to LCDs, CRTs, printed material, and anything else that is capable of rendering those same easily-read fonts?
New research suggests that the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain "lazy."
Given that introduction, TFA is made of epic fail if it lacks the following two elements:
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
So e-Ink is better than paper? Wohooo!
Yes, because we all remember our Doctor's prescriptions in almost illegible handwriting, don't we?
E-Readers are too easy ... I think we should all just wait for the movie ;-)
Cover your eyes the better to see with.
Cover your ears the better to hear with.
Cover your mouth the better to speak with.
Stupid people conducting "research" produces stupid results? Hmmm.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666 via http://lifehacker.com/5672301/hard-to-read-fonts-can-make-text-easier-to-remember via http://lifehacker.com/5733692/harder-to-read-fonts-may-improve-learning via http://idle.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1950904&cid=34880154
I'm sorry, but I have to mod this up... that was funny...
It's all damned lies and statistics!! I mean 47% of all people use statistics to back up their arguments.
Well if hard to read tell the brain that something is important then my handwritten notes are the most important stuff you have never read!
I understand that Ms Meyer has a B.A in Literature, which should more than qualify her to write. Sci Fi and fantasy authors generally seem to be better qualified to write fiction than their 'normal' compatriots. If you truly want atrocious writing, I recommend James Patterson.
In terms of style I don't think that the Twilight series is that bad, and may even be a cut above many novels in that regard. Stephen Kings opinions notwithstanding, the Twilight series is well written and has atmosphere; it wouldn't hook its audience if it didn't. My main problem with it is that for some reason I got involved in the characterisation in an adverse way, in the sense I was praying that someone would kill the sanctimonious Edward and rip out the the heart of the passive female moose posing as the heroine.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
jUsTbEkUzItZhArD2rEaD
Looks like /. should have hand-written the previous article on this subject.
What about regular books ? Crisper fonts, and better contrast compared to e-readers.
From TFA:
When you are a reading a straightforward sentence, or a paragraph full of tropes and cliches, you’re almost certainly relying on this ventral neural highway. As a result, the act of reading seems effortless and easy. We don’t have to think about the words on the page.
But the ventral route is not the only way to read. The second reading pathway – it’s known as the dorsal stream – is turned on whenever we’re forced to pay conscious attention to a sentence, perhaps because of an obscure word, or an awkward subclause, or bad handwriting.
Well that says it all, doesn't it. If you want people to remember what you wrote, write something interesting that doesn't consist of tropes and cliches and therefore motivates the reader to pay conscious attention. If you insist on writing something inane full of tropes and cliches, publish in Bad Handwriting Sans, throw in an obscure word or two and several awkward subclauses or maybe you could translate the entire thing into linear B.
There are good reasons for activating conscious attention and bad ones. A good one is that the information presented has intrinsic value (presents new information in the broadest sense). A bad one is presenting information in a way that fools the brain into thinking there is intrinsic value while all there actually is is a messy way of presenting information that does not warrant that kind of attention.
You can imagine what people will do outside of a laboratory when confronted with the second type. They will pay conscious attention for two paragraphs, notice that what they're reading is a badly written text full of tropes and cliches and stop reading it altogether.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
"If it was hard to write, it should be hard to read."
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Totally agree. Anything anybody writes using LaTeX must be important and clever because the default font is so darn ugly.
When text is harder to read, this forces our cognitive resources on the shape of the letters and how letters form words. We try to find familiar words in the confusing medium, and therefore as a side effect focus on unknown words, such as the name of those "fictional alien species" which the readers were tested against.
So they're right in that when we read harder, we're better at noticing the particular spelling of unknown words. But what do we sacrifice in the process? Our focus shifts to merely trying to interpret the protocol (the printed/displayed text) and thus away from trying to grasp the actual meaning of the text, and the higher concepts/story that are described in it.
Try it: it's very hard to both focus on analyzing the accent, phrasing and voice tember of somebody who talks to you, and at the same time listen to the story he's telling.
And the story and concepts are the most useful part of speech and text, and not learning random sequences of letter by heart, and reproducing them verbatim later on. The scientists in this study are right in that they succeeded to bias their readers to the medium, but failed to properly define what's the essense of reading: describing ideas, concepts, stories. Letters and words are just the means, not the goal. ...So I believe I'll be keep using my readers on "easy" in the future as well.
I have the Kindle app on my iPad, and my main observation is that I read a lot faster. The amount of text per screen is less than on a printed page, but it's just about right to read at a glance. It's a shame the battery life sucks compared to a real Kindle.
...laura, unashamed Apple fangirl
I remember being taught that speech disfluencies (er, um and uh) are supposed to make the speaker sound more authoritative.
Maybe this guy is just applying that same logic to print; he doesn't seem to have a lot of proof though.
I've known a number of women who were also "so easy on the eyes", and I'm pretty sure I remember them all in detail.
#DeleteChrome
B ullshit
In contrast, handwriting and fonts that are more challenging to read signal to the brain that the content of the message is important and worth remembering, experts say.
I don't know who these experts are or why they say that, but for me handwriting and fonts that are more challenging to read signal to the brain that the content isn't worth reading because it's too much trouble, causing me to stop reading and go do something else.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
No, they aren't. Honestly, this crap comes from the Telegraph...
From TFA:
"He wrote on his Frontal Cortex blog that there are two ways of reading – using the brain's ventral pathway, through which the brain recognises words and understands their individual meanings, or the dorsal stream, which activates itself when we have to focus on an obscure word, awkward clause or illegible writing." ...
Given the author doesn't even understand the decades-old, gross-level pathway distinctions that any first year psych student should know, I find it just a wee bit difficult to take any of the rest of this nonsense seriously.
Whether the article is true or not, reading this summary made me want to purchase an e-reader because they're easier on the eyes than conventional paper-based documents.
This leads me to believe this whole article was a nice way to advertise Sony and Amazon products...
Driving a manual transmission engages the driver more than an automatic, and thus are more aware of their surroundings (and are arguably safer drivers for it). Automatics just allow people's attention to be focused on screaming kids and hot girls walking down the sidewalk.
e-readers are the automatic transmission of reading? Well, probably not as bad as books-on-tape, but I can see a tiny hint of validity to these findings.
That explains why doctor's handwriting looks like my 2-year olds...harder to read, more important...Time to start writing in my newly designed crap font....
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
>>>This is important. Your brain can tell, because it's hard to read - d00d j00 r kewl w/ m4d sk1llz bt such a newb.
-1 Overrated
Jesus Christ.
Smegheads don't even recognize
a joke when they see one.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It is sad how modding has killed the way this site used to be fun.
Here's a recent study that came up with similar findings.
I REALLY don't understand why some are acting like they think this is not possible. You're conditioned to do it. At the most basic level you do it to SURVIVE. All animals will pay greater attention to something that is different than what they are used to NO MATTER how high they are on the food chain.
If the title caught your eye amidst the dozens of posts, and you've read this far, I'm pretty confident that you WILL remember this post 5 minutes from now. Do remember anything about the post you read before this one?
In a series of comparative tests, readers using electronic devices read 15% slower on average than on paper positioned the same way. Higher bit-densities improved reading performance only slightly.
--dave
Not at my desk: "citation needed"
davecb@spamcop.net
Making text harder to read makes for more eyestrain and headaches.
i remain super smart by reading all of my documents in wingdings
I think that... wait... what were we talking about?
E-readers are marketed towards professionals who are functionally illiterate and must make reading fun with overpriced gadgets. They can't remember what they read because their eyes just gloss over the words they don't understand.
Wikileaks Is Democracy
With this new found knowledge, i can now claim that i consistently write THE MOST IMPORTANT things in the known universe, not that anyone, including me, will be able to read what it is....
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The real truth is that the researcher owns a bookstore...
Now the self importance of in unreadable doctor's script is clear. The medium is the message from a doctor. The more important you think you are, the more important your message, the worse your handwriting.
Sorry but learning and intelligence are not tied to fuzzy printed letters. My brain remembers stuff I read because of interest and appeal or through repetition and practice, not because of the amount of eyestrain I had reading it.
Yet again some group of Luddites going on mindlessly about how some new innovation is reducing our brains to mush. Clear screens, Google, video games, spell checkers, keyboards, calculators, abacus, shoes, forks, spoons, wheels, fire; all innovations some crackerjack scientist got paid way too much money to try and discredit with nonsense (or non-science). Luckily nobody takes this research seriously.
What is most hilarious is that this comes from a "blogger" trying to get his message across that what we read on clear screens is forgettable...wait a minute, maybe he is on to something actually.
hey if the clear screens and easily read fonts of e-readers makes your brain "lazy.so why user are going to E-book technology and choosing kindle or nook type e books devices
buy books online
who are these "experts"? clearly they do not own a kindle
Document Buffs go to digital document management