Living in the Now | Mrinal
Chatterjee | 7.12.23
PRINTED
TEXT IN DIGITAL ERA
Dr.
Mrinal Chatterjee
Printed text
has been around 600 years. Digital era in India is just about 30 years old. In
this short time, it seems it has pushed print out of the media ecosphere. There
is a gloom over printed text, with some writing the epitaph. Everybody and
their uncle and aunty are gung ho about the digital media- how it enjoys a high
convenience quotient, how it can provide multi-platform, help multi-tasking,
help search anything you require and also to listen to a song simultaneously.
Printed text
does have some plus points. There is a tactile and sensory experience that
cannot be replicated by digital media. Holding a book, magazine, or
newspaper allows people to engage with the content differently. There is
also a sense of permanence and durability to printed materials that cannot be
achieved with digital media.
However, the
general view is: the days of printed text is over. Digital is the future- the
only future. Print will soon be history. And rightfully so. Its days are over.
I do not
agree with these assumptions. I strongly feel, the days of printed text are not
over, yet. It will survive at least for the next 50 years, or roughly two
generations.
Let me put
forth my arguments:
a.
Recent
research shows that between digital and print reading, print is better for
comprehension and cognitive development.
b.
Reading fiction
and poetry from printed text, provides denser emotional satisfaction, besides
understanding.
c.
Reading from
printed text makes children sharper, smarter and more imaginative, which the
future technology needs the most.
With the increase in digital texts
for schools, there have been many studies to see how this affects reading
comprehension, an important cognitive process in learning. Delgado et al.
(2018) reviewed the research on reading on screen vs. reading digitally in a
study called “Don’t throw away your printed books”. Results showed what the
title suggested.
Results also showed that print was
consistently better for reading comprehension when time was limited and the
genre was non-fiction. They also found that as time went on (from 2000 to 2017)
the advantages of print increased and devices that require scrolling are worse
than those that do not.
The
pattern is clear – print reading is better than digital reading for
comprehension. Why? The answer is the extraneous cognitive load that digital
reading puts on the reader.
Cognitive
load is the amount of mental energy you are using to perform a task. Let’s say
you can keep a maximum 5 things in your mind at a time (i.e. in your working
memory), if you’re trying to think of 5 different things that’s a high
cognitive load, whereas trying to remember just one thing is a low cognitive
load. One reason why reading on your phone is an issue is because simply having
your smartphone near you while studying reduces your working memory capacity.
This is because of cognitive load which is further separated into extraneous
and intrinsic cognitive load. Your phone is a source
of extraneous cognitive load – information that is irrelevant to the learning task that
places demands on your working memory. This interferes with your ability to
learn the material you’re studying. This is the opposite of intrinsic
cognitive load, which are the cognitive demands of the specific
learning task. For example, a book has just the
information, whereas a digital medium (website, browser, phone, etc.) comes
with an array of possible distractions all fighting for your attention.
What about other readers that are
designed just for reading? These don’t have notifications or apps. The mere
structure of the e-reader takes more cognitive effort to place a text in
context when it’s more difficult on a screen reader to see what came before and
after the bit you’re reading. The undeniable benefit of a physical book is the
ease with which you can place the text in context. Where information is placed
in a text can help comprehension because we learn by making connections..
Putting text in context like this is much harder in digital readers because
once it disappears from the screen it’s gone, out of sight and out of mind.
This might be why studies comparing print, scrolling, and non-scrolling show
those that have to scroll score worse on reading comprehension tests.
Another point relates to the
quantum of enjoyment and understanding. Print provides more. The reason is
simple: we tend to read print, see screen. Our engagement with the content is
far too dense and intrinsic in print than digital. When engagement is denser,
it has more chances of providing more enjoyment and understanding.
Lesson learnt: don’t shun digital;
you probably cannot for it is ubiquitous and has a very high utility quotient. However,
don’t desert print. Engage with printed text, book, newspaper, magazines,
whatever as frequently as you can. Encourage your children, students to read books
and magazines in physical form rather than in digital form.
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