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Interview with Dr. Anne Mangen on reading on paper and screens
October 19, 2009 | 7:32 am
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By Paul Biba
Danny Bloom, a TeleRead contributor, did an interview this summer with Dr. Mangen (pictured above) about whether reading is the same on screens or paper. Dr. Mangen is a reading specialist at the National Center for Reading Research and Education at Stavanger University in Norway, and she published a paper on this topic in late 2008. You might want to take a look at Danny’s interview.
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Dr Mangen’s work and ideas were mentioned in Alex Beam’s June 19 column in the Boston Globe and Providence Journal in Rhode Island. Link:
http://www.boston.com/ae/media/articles/2009/06/19/paper_vs_computer_screen/
Norwegian researcher, Anne Mangen, recently weighed in with an interesting paper in the Journal of Research in Reading, asserting that screen reading and page reading are radically different. “The feeling of literally being in touch with the text is lost when your actions – clicking with the mouse, pointing on touch screens, or scrolling with keys or on touch pads – take place at a distance from the digital text, which is, somehow, somewhere inside the computer, the e-book, or the mobile phone,’’ Mangen writes.
Her conclusion: “Materiality matters. . . . One main effect of the intangibility of the digital text is that of making us read in a shallower, less focused way.’’
…
I asked Mangen via e-mail if she thought there might be a future convergence of Kindle reading and Gutenberg reading. “Reading digital text will always differ from reading text that is not digital (i.e., that has a physical, tangible materiality), no matter how reader-friendly and ‘paper-like’ the digital reading device (e.g., Kindle etc.),’’ she answered. “The fact that we do not have a direct physical, tangible access to the totality of the text when reading on Kindle affects the reading experience. When reading a book we can always see, and feel with our fingers and hands, our progress through the book as the pile of pages on the left side grows and the pile of pages on the right side gets smaller. At the same time, we can be absolutely certain that the technology [the book] will always work – there are no problems with downloading, missing text due to technical or infrastructure problems, etc.’’
She says the e-reader experience introduces “a degree of unpredictability and instability’’ that influences reading, even if we are not aware of it.
The distractions Mangen references are always with us, whether we read on screen, or on paper: The noise of the street; televisions and radios; cellphone conversations; and the demands immediately surrounding your field of vision, such as ads on a page adjacent to the article you’re reading, or the attractive brunette sitting next to you. The “distancing” she describes by pressing a button or moving a mouse is no less demanding on your concentration than folding a newspaper in a crowded subway car or holding open a paperback with a splayed hand.
Certainly there are physiological differences inherent in reading different media… but these are, in fact, largely unimportant. Most of those physiological differences have the most impact on those who must learn new ways of accessing reading material in adulthood, while people who learn them early tend to more quickly accept these physical aspects as normal and apply them unconsciously when they grow up.
But age notwithstanding, it has already been demonstrated and clinically proven that an individual truly desiring to learn a new way of doing something can almost always teach themselves to do it, no matter how difficult (Jordan’s Theorem: You get used to what you want to get used to).
More important than the physiological aspects of media, of overriding importance are the behavioral differences in reading media, and those are more impacted by layout and design than by type of physical media. These differences have been studied for years, with web-based content and portable reading devices opening up new chapters in our delivery of content, and our comprehension of that content.
As for the question of new words for the phenomenon of “reading on screens”: Mangen shares my opinion that there are simply too many types of physical media capable of being read from; and “screen” is too generic, and too inaccurate, a term to be applied to all web-based or e-book-based reading media. When a single word can modify so many different things as paper, CRT, LED, eInk, LED, OLED, LCD, dedicated reader, laptop, tablet, PDA, cellphone, etc, etc… it makes more sense to simply continue to use the word “reading” and apply the modifier to it, rather than use it to inaccurately encompass (or exclude) certain modifiers.
“a degree of unpredictability and instability’’
You mean, like when you need cash and you go to an ATM and maybe it’s down or eats your card? We live with this type of unpredictability all the time, and I think its making us crazy.
Wont it be fun when you are deep in the middle of a book and it gets ‘recalled’ by the publisher for whatever reason, and, zap, its gone?
Dr. Mangen makes some excellent points, which is why she will be pretty much ignored.
LOL re Bob, above:
“Dr. Mangen makes some excellent points, which is why she will be pretty much ignored.”
So true.
and Steve, re
“….it makes more sense to simply continue to use the word “reading” and apply the modifier to it, rather than use it to inaccurately encompass (or exclude) certain modifiers.”
I see your point and it makes perfect sense, and I agree with it, — somewhat. I still feel that new word or term will help researchers and scholars study the differences betweem page reading and screen reading. But maybe a new word is NOT needed, true.
Time will tell. If it is needed, it will come. If it is not needed, ”reading” does fine.
What Steve Jordan says.
With one addition. Reading on an e-ink device may *be* ‘reading on a screen’; but it doesn’t *feel* like it. Why else would I have kept reaching with my left hand to the upper-right corner of my device to try to turn the page, when it was new? I’ve also heard reports of people reaching for their bookmarks when they were knocking off for the night.
asphalt , your story is very LOL, I loved it, thanks for the anecdotal evidence. Bolters my case.
RE
[With one addition. Reading on an e-ink device may *be* ‘reading on a screen’; but it doesn’t *feel* like it. ]
“Why else would I have kept reaching with my left hand to the upper-right corner of my device to try to turn the page, when it was new? I’ve also heard reports of people reaching for their bookmarks when they were knocking off for the night.”
LOL. Great story!
from Richard Watson’s BRAINMAIL newsletter from the UK:
http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/brainmail_issue53.txt
Word Detective: ******Screening*******
A term coined by (or at least popularised by) Dan Bloom to
describe reading on screen. The context here is that
reading on screen is fundamentally different from reading
on paper. Interesting implications for the publishing
industry and education and also for press advertising.
Richard Watson, a very good futurist in the UK, has a website here that dishes about screening today:
Click on these links for the two issues:
http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/brainmail_issue52.txt
http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/brainmail_issue53.txt
Or here to for iPhone friendly versions:
http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/brainmail_issue52i.txt
http://brainmail.nowandnext.com/brainmail_issue53i.txt
Here’s a taste.. he says:
Word Detective: ”Screening”
A term coined by (or at least popularised by) Dan Bloom to
describe reading on screen. The context here is that
reading on screen is fundamentally different from reading
on paper. Interesting implications for the publishing
industry and education and also for press advertising.
A very good post blog on the Chronicle of Higher Education’s website today by Emory professor Mark Bauerlein about Dr Mangen’s 2008 paper published in the Journal of Reading in the UK.
http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Screen-ReadingPrint/8551/
I have done on-line research involving dozens of K-1 teachers and hundreds of young students. We have proved that children learn to read spontaneously once they can write the alphabet at at least 40 LPM. Montessori claimed such expertise enables kids to mentally envision written words. It also gets their RAN/letters up to < 40/min.