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. 2022 May 6;35(1):10.
doi: 10.1186/s41155-022-00212-4.

Reading digital- versus print-easy texts: a study with university students who prefer digital sources

Noemí Bresó-Grancha  1 , María José Jorques-Infante  2 , Carmen Moret-Tatay  3   4
Affiliations

Reading digital- versus print-easy texts: a study with university students who prefer digital sources

Noemí Bresó-Grancha et al. Psicol Reflex Crit. .

Abstract

The transition from on-paper to on-screen reading seems to make it necessary to raise some considerations, as a greater attentional effort has been claimed for print texts than digital ones. Not surprisingly, most university students prefer this digital medium. This research aims to examine reading times by contextualizing this phenomenon into two processes: namely, word recognition and reading comprehension task on paper and on screen. Thus, two different tasks-counterbalanced into digital and print mediums-were carried out per each participant with a preference for a digital medium: a reading comprehension task (RCT) and a lexical decision task (LDT) after reading a specific story. Participants were slower reading print texts and no statistically significant differences were found in RCT accuracy. This result suggests that the task required more cognitive resources under the print medium for those with a worse comprehension performance in reading, and a more conservative pattern in digital RCT for those with a better performance.

Keywords: Cognition load; Comprehension; Digital; Print; Reading; Shallowing hypothesis; Word recognition.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
RCT task. The task was counterbalanced in the order of presentation of reading material according to media type: digital or print (left versus right). Finally, written comprehension questions were asked in written form
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The classical LDT. The left-hand page is the paper adaptation for the LDT where participants crossed the words from pseudowords
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Bayes factor robustness check for differences between RCT time on screen and paper format
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Bayes factor robustness check for differences between LDT accuracy on digital and paper support
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Bayes factor robustness check for differences between RCT accuracy on digital and paper support
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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