Images l Wikimedia Commons m Vinckier Cohen et

Images: (l) Wikimedia Commons (m) Vinckier, Cohen et al Neuron 2007 (r) David Maxwell (NYT) 20130113 The Fate of Reading: Internet, Media, and the Brain Vincent W. Hevern, SJ, Ph. D. COR 400 February 26, 2019

“Neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered that, even as adults, our brains are very plastic. They're very malleable, they adapt at the cellular level to whatever we happen to be doing. And so the more time we spend surfing, and skimming, and scanning. . . the more adept we become at that mode of thinking. ” 2010 [E]ven if people get better at hopping from page to page, they will still be losing their abilities to employ a "slower, more contemplative mode of thought. " …[R]esearch shows that as people get better at multitasking, they "become less creative in their thinking. ” (Nicholas Carr, NPR Interview, 6/2/2010)

NY Times, February 23, 2019 Negative impact of cell phone?

Neurobiology of Vision & Reading

Since 1987 computing industry has a standard for display of characters Version 11. 0 (2018) contains 137, 439 characters from 146 modern and historic scripts (plus emojis and other symbol sets) Unicode Consortium

Professor of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France Director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, Orsay, France 2009

Dehaene, 2012

Literacy & Biopsychology Our visual recognition system (VRS) is attuned to line junctions and other invariants of shape in the environment Plasticity of the VRS is sufficient to be reoriented or changed toward the shapes of written words Scripts across human cultures were crafted to shapes that fit with human brain architecture Developing literacy takes time and effort (beginning with learning letters and graphemes) to mold the brain Dehaene, 2012

• Media devices become hand-held and portable after 2007 • Elaborated infrastructure for digital media access (wifi & cellular) • Development of multiple social media sites & functions • Rise of diversified information sources online * Newspapers, magazines, digital news media * Government & scientific information (journals, etc. )

2017 • How print vs. digital reading are defined in not consistent in research • There is no comprehensive answer to whether “digital” vs “paper” reading is “better” (though see below for specific details). • The nature and scope of digital devices has changed significantly in the last two decades. • Digital reading is not going away: society has embraced it. • For texts longer than a single page (i. e. , > 500 words), reading in print leads to greater comprehension than digitally. • When reading for “depth of understanding” rather than just the “gist” of the material, paper was better than digital. • The more complex the idea content of text, the greater the advantage of reading in print rather than digitally • “Digital Natives” (those who grew up in a digital world) do not show an advantage in using digital over paper texts.

2018 • Analyzed research studies of digital text without links (which is more similar to printed text). • Screen reading is inferior to printed text reading in respect to comprehension (across all age groups) • The advantage of paper text (vs. digital) • has increased from 2000 to 2017 • Is larger when reading information versus “narrative” texts • Is stronger when reading is time-limited • The failure of “Digital natives” to show greater comprehension to screenbased texts may be the result of poorer attention behavior (that is, not immersing oneself in the text at a sufficient level).

• Stimulus: 28 -page (about 10, 800 words; ca. 1 hour reading time) mystery story by Elizabeth George, titled Lusting for Jenny, Inverted. • Participants: N = 50 (32 F) 23 years old, 4. 2 years of college; split equally between Print vs. Kindle • Few differences except Print > Kindle on reconstructing plot time /chronology (especially early in story)

Reading in the era of digitization Comprehension reading long-from text on a screen tends to be either the same or inferior to print More demanding reading (e. g. , greater depth of understanding) suffers more than leisure reading Readers are more likely to be overconfident about comprehension abilities for screen vs. print text Screen inferiority is INCREASING over time (no “digital native” effect) Digital text is much more flexible than print to support struggling readers & adjust to individual needs Screen/print equivalence can be achieved with conscious efforts to engage in depth-processing Kovač & van der Weel (2018 b)

Illiteracy & Impaired Literacy in the US q q 1980 s: low estimate = 13 -16% unable to read English National Adult Literacy Survey (2002) q Low: 21 -23% vs. High 3 -4% q q Low: 35% < 9 years of school; 51% White; 33% over 65 years, 26% disability PIAAC (2012 -14) Program for Int’l Assessment of Adult Competencies

Discussion q Do you experience difficulty in understanding or comprehending certain kinds of texts? q Do you prefer online or paper text? q What is your attention span like? q What makes it harder or easier to study? q What techniques or strategies do you use to improve your comprehension?