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Do Readers Absorb Less On Kindles Than On Paper? Not Necessarily
An anonymous reader writes eBooks are great and wonderful, but as The Guardian reports, they might not be as good for readers as paper books. Results from a new study show that test subjects who read a story on a Kindle had trouble recalling the proper order of the plot events. Out of 50 test subjects, half read a 28-page story on the Kindle, while half read the same story on paper. The Kindle group scored about the same on comprehension as the control group, but when they were asked to put the plot points in the proper order, the Kindle group was about twice as likely to get it wrong.
So, is this bad news for ebooks? Have we reached the limits of their usefulness? Not necessarily. While there is evidence that enhanced ebooks don't enhance education, an older study from 2012 showed that students who study with an e-textbook on an ebook reader actually scored as well or higher on tests than a control group who did not. While that doesn't prove the newer research wrong, it does suggest that further study is required. What has your experience been with both recall and enjoyment when reading ebooks?
So, is this bad news for ebooks? Have we reached the limits of their usefulness? Not necessarily. While there is evidence that enhanced ebooks don't enhance education, an older study from 2012 showed that students who study with an e-textbook on an ebook reader actually scored as well or higher on tests than a control group who did not. While that doesn't prove the newer research wrong, it does suggest that further study is required. What has your experience been with both recall and enjoyment when reading ebooks?
I find a study like this to be highly suspect. It's a 28 page story, hardly anything special. Have them read an actual novel instead. In 28 pages the "plot" is going to either be very convoluted or extremely thin. I find it just as likely that the 28 page story bored the kindle folks half to death and they didn't bother trying to recall it.
You're going to have to do better than 28 pages. That's barely a chapter in the books I read.
I think there is something in this. I used to read paper books prolifically, but through change in lifestyle (kids, work pressures) didn't get round to it so much. The kindle has allowed me to read more again because I can take it everywhere with me. But I certainly get much more confused about which book was which and have less association with who the author was as the whole book purchase decision making is so much quicker.
This means I lose track of which books in a particular series I've read, and find myself wondering if I've read a particular title or not
BUT, I am reading more again and enjoying it when I do. So does it really matter?
E-readers are easier to hold in my hands, especially when it comes to long (in terms of pages) or small (in terms of physical size) books. I also like that I can read in the dark with my e-reader because it has a backlit screen.
It's easier to turn the page of normal books, though. It's also much easier to skip around between large numbers of pages.
What I've noticed in myself and in others is that it's not so much the act of reading as it is the act of putting into practice what one has read, from the simplest form in transcription, to the most complex in applied labs.
In myself, for something that's going to be difficult to remember from a lecture or a text, I find that writing it down with a pencil or pen makes remembering it easier than typing it does. My wife has commented similarly for herself as well. That's part of what makes me wonder about all of these electronic education means, in that I don't think they're as good at reinforcing learning as penmanship is. Rote repetition isn't necessarily fun, but it does often work.
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The Kindle (unlike my first ereader - a Sony that sat unused after the first month) dramatically changed my reading habits. It made it very easy to read at night in bed (thanks to the small weight and the integrated light), to carry a bunch of books with me anywhere (e.g. commuting to work, on vacation etc) and also the instantaneous delivery helps getting a book the instant you think about reading it.
As a result I am enjoying reading more, but, yeah, I guess recall of individual books is a bit worse now that I am reading more than twice as many...
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It doesn't look quite like paper yet. A little more contrast perhaps and zero reflectivity, and no that doesn't mean embedded LEDs. What I find is that ebooks make a poorly written work a lot less appealing, while I have no difficulty reading, enjoying and retaining the masterpieces in that format.
Also, which model of Kindle? There are a distressing number of options:
e -ink or LCD?
With advertisements or without?
Large or small sized?
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With a physical book that I've read I have a fairly good idea where I need to open it up to find something I'm looking for. With an eBook there are no pages to really catalog because they're all on the same page. Just a thought.
I'm a calculus instructor. We're required to tolerate e-texts. I've found that my students who use the e-text in class on laptops generally fail to be able to effectively use the textbook. The students with the "illegal" pdf on the ipad do better, but those students who use the dead tree version in class are generally able to find information when doing the homework. However, that's all anecdotal, and I'm working on designing a study to get a statistically significant result. Unfortunately, the first pass shows that use of paper v.s. e-reader is strongly correlated with ethnicity and looks clustered on family income, so designing a meaningful study is very challenging. (the 2011 study doesn't give a meaningful answer, despite the submitters flawed argument otherwise)
I suspect the e-readers are more likely to be time pressed people who multitask alot often skimming for important points where readers of paper editions tend to close out distractions and read the full text without jumping about looking at key events in random order. E book manual owners tend to read them the same way I read the National Electrical Code going to revelant sections to answer specific questions. Other than the numbered chapters sections of the code, I would have had difficulting knowing if Hospital Isolated Ground requirements came before or after the section of low voltage wires in an elevator access shaft.
The truth shall set you free!
Unless they had a high suspicion that e-readers cause poor retention then why even study it unless they were skewed from the start? This is like pitting peanut butter cookies versus chocolate chip cookies as cancer cures. You'll likely find that one works better than the other just by chance, but the fact is that neither of them has any cancer curing effect whatsoever. It's a suspicious, stupid study.
If you asked me what the plot line is for the book that I am currently reading, I couldn't tell you off of the top of my head. However, after picking up the text and reading for five minutes, I would be able to spell out the plot, the characters, and their back story. When I read a physical book, I have better memory of what's going on. The reason is that a physical book provides clues that aids in memory recall, such as the cover art, size, shape, etc. These clues can be more easily recalled and associated with the story than plain text.
However, with a text book it's somewhat different. You read the text book over a longer period of time and, presumably, you have lectures and homework which re-enforces the ideas.
I still have the old keyboard Kindle. I've thought about getting the new Paperwhite but I prefer the physical buttons for turning pages. However, I'd buy a new Kindle in an instant if Amazon came out with a high resolution colour e-Ink version that showed cover art, etc. I'm not interested in the Kindle Fire, simply because I enjoy reading books on the beach.
... an e-reader saves a LOT of shelf space, making it WORTH it!
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Did they consider this:
http://hbr.org/2012/03/hard-to...
Maybe you have the wrong e-reader. When you turn on the Kobo, the cover of the ebook is displayed for half a second before it switches to the last opened page. Also, the Kobo keeps track of which books you've read and how much of the book you've gone through.
The shortcomings with the Kobo are:
1 - No color.
2 - Books are hard to place into series order, and hard to arrange on bookshelves.
3 - Conversion from one format to another sometimes causes paragraphs to merge. This makes it hard to read.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the more idiosyncratic tactile experience of reading a physical book positively affects the reader's ability to memorize the content.
I don't do much ebook reading, but I can assure you that since I tend to read books random access*, I can easily get plot sequences out of line.
This is not specifically an ebook problem, if it's any kind of problem at all.
*Yeah. I skip around sometimes. The author is not the boss of me. If I want to jump ahead, cheat and see the ending early, whatever... that's how I read it.
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e-books are less weight meaning they travel more often, and I am reading on average twice what I did on dead trees. Single data point entered.
Bye!
(Note, I tried to make the subject line read, "Books>Kindle>Audiobooks", but for some reason, Slashdot removed the ">"s.)
I absorb least of all from audiobooks, only partly because I usually fall asleep in the first five minutes.
Ever since the Kindle app got rid of the little graphical representation of where you are in the book (like a timeline, at the bottom, where you saw whether you were 1/4 of the way through, halfway or close to the end), I've been a little uncomfortable with my ebooks.
Say what you will about those old paper-and-board book things, at least you knew exactly where you were, and could get some mental image of the progression of the narrative arc. So when you'd only got maybe 1/10th of the book read (based upon the fact that only a little bit of the book was on the left hand side) and you were reading a mystery, you could pretty much rest assured that there were some pretty big plot twists to come. Maybe that has something to do with any less absorption from ebooks (if there really is less, which I doubt this study proves).
Even so, I read mostly everything on a tablet, except sheet music. And when a really good sheet music e-book reader (and editor) comes out at less than $2000, I'm going to grab one. Musical manuscripts are just too small, even on a 10" tablet. I need to be able to see two pages of music at a time (at least).
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I am a bibliophile, and much prefer to read a book to my kindle.
Nonetheless, I travel a lot and a kindle is inarguably an advantage for me.
I found the kindle was terribly distracting for at least the first month, until I settled down and didn't have to think at all about using it. So I would like to see this test done with experienced users.
-Styopa
"Have we reached the limits of their usefulness?"
Ummm...no? Seriously, WTF? Sure, the study is interesting, but what limits are we talking about? I suppose the Kindle might not be the best choice for reading a history text, but aside from that, meh.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
In my tests, paper books were far more absorbent than Kindle readers (either eInk or touchscreen). The average paperback book will absorb about 3 deciliters, while the Kindles didn't really absorb anything. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the Kindles were uniformly inoperable after the absorption testing, but that is beyond the scope of this study.
The Elizabeth George study included only two experienced Kindle users, and she is keen to replicate it using a greater proportion of Kindle regulars. But she warned against assuming that the "digital natives" of today would perform better.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
If you are comparing a dedicated ereader to a printed book, I would be wondering why retention would be better with the print version. That is particularly true when you are looking at a short text, where things like pages read is less relevant.
Now if you're talking about real reading situations, I can understand there being a difference. I would imagine that people are more likely to pickup and drop the book at different intervals (the benefit of portability). I would imagine that people are also more prone to jumping between books (the benefit of large memories). For general purpose devices, I would imagine that people are more prone to responding to notifications (the benefit of integrated and connected devices). But that's not what the study is examining.
I find that I have trouble concentrating on an audio book vs printed/e-book.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I wonder how familiar the readers using the kindles where with the device. I imagine that if you are using it for the first time it would be somewhat distracting until you get used to it.
null
I read a little slower. I have no A-B-A "test" to tell!
I never lose my place and the "book" lays open instead always wanting to close. Since I don't read for more than 30 minutes at a time, those things are a decent +.
That was Zen, this is Tao
I have both an iPad and Kindle. A few things with the iPad...I touch a word, the dictionary entry comes up. This is quite helpful. I am used to referring to the progress bar so sequence recall isn't a problem. Some books have x-Ray enabled, and that helps with story cohesion. Basically, after I've spent a lot of time with the iPad reader, I find it as good or better than paper. Except for the beach.
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One thing that goes away with the Kindle is the ability to use your fingers as temporary bookmarks while you flip pages back and forth to look something up. Advanced book users might use several of these bookmarks at one point if the information is spread across chapters. Even the simple "partially turn page to see what's on the other side without losing focus of the current page" isn't working.
Yet I still bought a Kindle (Paperwhite), because books aren't very readable in the dark, and I find myself switching away from the book (to Facebook, news-site-I-fancy-reading-now, jeu-de-l'heure) on a multi-purpose tablet. Haven't tried learning with it though. I use it to put myself to sleep :)
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... but I have more trouble
reading text that is squished
into the tiny window of
an e-reader. Having to manually
scroll interrupts my reading
and I tire of the experience
quickly. Maybe that has
something to do with
their reduced comprehension.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M