Happy New Year. My final post of the year will return to one of the issues I have written about several times during this past year. I would describe the issue as seeking an answer to the questions “Does reading from a screen reduce understanding immediately and reduce the development of reading skills long term?” At one level, I know what I think personally. I read nearly everything from a screen because what I am doing is more than reading. I am using the digital advantage of reading from a device in the process of taking notes and annotating I see as beneficial in the long run. I have made my own decision regarding my behavior in what I consider a logical way. The issue of skill development is a different issue. I see the amount of time our grandkids spend on their devices mostly watching video. I really don’t know if this preoccupation with screen-based information is damaging to their development of reading and thinking skills. I do think it is an important issue that deserves attention.
I just finished working my way through a new meta-analysis related to this issue (Altamura and colleagues). Like so many articles I have read on the topic, the results are troubling as related to the concern for younger readers. However, the results because of the limitations of the methodology employed are open to questions and alternative interpretations. I will describe the review as best I can and as always invite those interested in this issue to read the original document for themselves.
The authors begin their approach by noting a widely accepted relationship between “out of classroom” reading to reading skill development. The relationship is proposed based on a positive spiral. As younger readers are exposed to gradually more demanding texts, they develop improved skills important to reading comprehension. These improved skills make possible successful understanding of even more demanding material which tends to be more informative and enjoyable and the upward spiral of capabilities continues. This relationship relates to other literacy correlates such as having access to more reading material in the home and being read to more frequently.
With an interest in digital reading, the researchers decide to review literature relating screen-based reading to reading proficiency as readers age. Does the same relationship between reading digital content and reading skill hold developmentally for what they define as recreational reading? With their definition of recreational reading comes the first methodological issue? They include pretty much any text-based experience one might have on a digital device – text messages, social media interactions of any type, blogs, and digital books. Obviously, there is not a meaningful equivalent to social media and text in previous studies of the relationship between text consumption and reading proficiency. The researchers did code from the difference between these short and long form samples of text in their statistical approach and this distinction will end up being important in my comments at a later point in this post.
The researchers propose they are testing two competing hypotheses. The displacement hypothesis suggests digital text is a replacement for text on paper and the shallowing hypothesis suggests that shorter segments of text so frequently available in digital environments require less in processing skill and encourage scanning and skimming. Shallowing may prevent critical skills from being applied and developed.
The researchers summarize their results as follows:
This relationship is significantly moderated by the reader’s educational stage. At early stages (primary and middle school) negative relationships are observed between leisure digital reading and text comprehension, while at later stages (high school and university) the relationship turns positive.
While the pattern of reading activity and comprehension skill differs from what is found with paper-based text, neither of the hypotheses was cleanly supported. This was the case because age was the only moderator variable achieving significance and the relationship was not consistent. The differentiation of the type of reading material was not significant. That is, the division between time spent on the more purely social and short content versus longer content was not a significant predictor of skill differences. The researchers suggest that studying the combination of screen and paper could be important. In other words, a focus on digital reading ignores other reading the participants might have done with text on paper which would likely have been longer-form reading.
So, this paper can be added to others (e.g., Delgado at colleagues) that offer concerns especially for younger readers. As I have suggested in other posts, this question is difficult for researchers to address because important variables are difficult to control with carefully controlled research studies. The developmental nature of reading skill is not consistent with an experimental approach that would control a treatment such as whether individuals read from paper or screen over an extended period of time. I question how much “reading” children actually do from screens. Few are allowed or can access social media services as a matter of personal safety. A more significant issue would seem to me to be whether reading is being replaced by watching. Research typically fails to provide actual quantification of the amount of time individuals are exposed to text. Without total exposure perhaps differentiated as screen vs paper, what conclusions are possible?
References
Altamura, L., Vargas, C., & Salmerón, L. (2023). Do New Forms of Reading Pay Off? A Meta-Analysis on the Relationship Between Leisure Digital Reading Habits and Text Comprehension. Review of Educational Research, 00346543231216463.
Delgado, P., Vargas, C., Ackerman, R., & Salmerón, L. (2018). Don’t throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension. Educational Research Review, 25, 23-38.
