My kids are in middle and high school, and they all have school-issued 13 in chromebooks. None of them have print text books, they are all online. I HATE studying with them, because of this. It is a nightmare to try to read a physics or math textbook; there is so much space taken by chrome, the book UI, etc, and the book usually displays full screen. Or, you zoom in, you can see 1 paragraph and half a figure, and can't turn the page. Then, you switch tabs back to your homework, also digital, and can't view the book. God forbid I show them how to tile the windows side by side, but even if you did, the book would be even smaller, and the hw questions run off the side and don't wrap. It is unbearable. I resort to digging out my 20+ year old college engineering and math textbooks for physical references. The kids don't seem to mind it too much, but it is all they have ever known.
This study [Mangen, Walgermo and Brønnick (2012)] should be replicated with adult subjects and N=500 instead of just N=72 kids from a single class.<p>In Sweden, based on similar results sub-notebooks and tables that were only recently introduced were removed again. I respect the Swedish for reacting on the new evidence instead of being in denial that the purchase of so much hardware was a mistake.<p>I write, read, and review scientific papers throughout the year, and most of the time, I will print them out (sometimes over one hundred pages for a single conference - e.g. 10 papers a 10 pages). The clearest benefit is reading mathematical formulae on paper vs screen, from my subjective experience, but also the ability to scribble notes, turn back the page to re-read something to double-check without much effort.<p>As much as I like computers, paper is the most ingenious medium ever invented by humankind, and the second most
durable w.r.t. long-term preservation of the written word (after parchment).
As someone who spent 6 years at the uni in the first half of 2000’s having access to the mixture of printed and digital materials, and as someone who has to read tons of different formal and informal docs on a daily basis, I can firmly say I don’t care about the results of this study and at least they are irrelevant to me. You need to get your tasks done, research and learn anything? Use whatever medium is available and fits your needs best and allows you to yield better results in a shorter timespan.<p>I won’t bother printing some programming language documentation and I miss the ability to search through text in printed books.<p>That being said, printed books smell good, and I enjoy the typographic excellence of them every time I grab a real book.
In somewhat delicious irony, I find this PDF almost unreadable on my iPhone screen due to the tiny font.<p>Hah: “The students were randomized into two groups, where the first group read two texts (1400–2000 words) in print, and the other group read the same texts as PDF on a computer screen.”<p>Maybe they should try the experiment again using a non-hostile format for presenting information on a computer.<p>(In case anyone else was wondering about resolution, this 2012 study used 15” LCDs at 1280x1024 running Windows XP - so definitely not retina.)
I believe digital reading could be more benifitial if better media were applied. This 2012 study invited "72 tenth graders read texts as PDF on a computer screen", which is simply bad.<p>For example, people spent hours exploring wikipedia, this could never be done with physical paper. I often find myself looking for Ctrl+F button holding a book. Interactive textbooks were posted on HN many times, like you can alter a numerical input and see graphs chaning in real time. This helps a lot for kids with limited imagination.<p>These days I can't live without an AI assistant. While reading, it's just so convenient just to ask. The AI might be wrong from time to time, so keep a critical mind, the AI is immensely helpful for foreign-language materials and complex acedemical papers.
Plausible result, but considering that this HN post is appearing on the same day as one of the top posts is about scientific fraud… let’s not get ahead of ourselves.<p>I say it all the time: provocative experimental results should be considered fraudulent until the raw data is shared, and then spurious until replicated.
I find reading texts on a 13 inch (3200x1800, 276 ppi) laptop easier to remember than on a 42 inch (3840x2160, 104 ppi) monitor. Reading takes more effort as text isn't as clear on the big screen.<p>Been waiting for 42 inch 8k monitors since 2017. There's a 55 inch IPS on the horizon (ASRock PG558KF).<p>Does anyone have experience reading text on 8K VA panels like Samsung QN700B?
I feel like I've known this intuitively for years, but have never been able to properly explain it to others.<p>For example, when I was in university (2015-20), all my lecture notes were available as pdfs, but I would just always print them anyway while the other students would read them on their devices. And when I learned French, I only bought physical books and never even once tried an e-reader. Paper is just easier to understand!
I've been reading digital image processing by Gonzalez and I must be honest: the sheer thickness of the book makes it very hard to handle (especially lying in bed). As others pointed out already, I do miss the ability of search the text. Good book though
A typical textbook gives me around an 11x17 display area with better than retina resolution and a refresh limited only by the speed of my optic nerve.<p>That’s about the usable area of a 27” monitor after all the UI trash has taken its share of space.<p>And of course, it leaves my monitor free for practicing whatever it is I’m trying to learn from the book. Alt tabbing is a terrible experience comparatively. Glancing at the text takes the time of a saccade and uses visual memory, leaving my short term memory free for concepts and working memory.<p>Obviously get a good book holder that you can stand next to your monitor(s).
My hypothesis is that the PDF format bears much blame here. The results might be
very different if the material is in a reflowable format like an epub or a web page.
If you think about it, the notion of a page exists only because of the physical
limitations of the paper medium, and PDF is page-centric only because it was designed
to represent printable materials. There's no reason to stick to pages anymore if
the material is to be consumed on a screen, and PDF is therefore also the wrong
choice for this.
I'm a book person through and through. Crafting Interpreters is an example of how a textbook can be when someone really puts the effort in, I know there's also a free PDF version but the paper book is well worth the price.<p>E-readers like the remarkable are getting closer, but that one's banned by some of our clients until they hire someone who understands security.
I've only read the abstract. One thing I would like to read about is, if the phenomenon is real what's the mechanism for it. Is it that people on screen have the tendency to change tab to look at memes every other paragraph? Is it that they associate screens with entertainment, and even without acting on it the brain gets too lazy? Or what?
I would love to know what happens with e-ink devices then. I feel this test is doing many things at once and the conclusion may not carry to e-ink (it's easier in the eyes, you can scribble...)
Here's a more recent meta analysis: Delgado et al., 2018. Don't throw away your printed books: A meta-analysis on the effects of reading media on reading comprehension <a href="https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X18300101" rel="nofollow">https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1747938X18300...</a><p>"Paper-based reading yields better comprehension outcomes than digital-based reading."
I mostly stopped reading paper books, as I do almost all book reading through Libby app on my tablet that has a high resolution display like most tablets produced in the past few years. It's a superior experience than a paper book in almost every way.<p>At work and home, with 4k monitor, it's so much easier to put multiple reading materials side by side and read / research across.<p>In 2012, even on the state of the art computer systems, the reading experience wasn't as good as it is now.