Reading and Eating

Kerry Carney, DDS, CDE

There comes a time when what you thought of as a simple act is revealed to be quite complex. This is not a bad thing. Understanding the complexity of things means we are presented with more things to consider, more layers of relationships to examine and more opportunities to understand and appreciate life in a deeper sense.

For example, consider the verb “to read.” It seems simple and straight forward. You are reading this editorial at this moment. But do we understand what it is to read a text? Reading is a little like eating; all the important things happen after the food moves past the lips.

Though reading a text is a recently developed ability, it springs from that evolutionarily advantageous skill of reading our environment. Reading is not simply rolling your eyes over abstract figures of an alphabet. Reading is more than just scanning as much as you can as fast you can. Just as eating is more than just stuffing your face with consumables, reading is a complex activity. It involves perception, recognition, comprehension and, finally, true understanding.

The media that has transmitted the information that we read has evolved: from stones, to clay tablets, from parchment to papyrus, from paper to digital screens. Each iteration has had advantages and disadvantages, but portability and economics have been primary drivers throughout the evolution of information media.

Reading our environment, predicting a future and determining how best to succeed in that future is a relevant, existential endeavor. To some extent, we read to succeed. As dentists, we read to become more effective in our service to our patients. We read to become more efficient in our practices. We read to succeed in our profession.

As we transition from print to digital only, it might prove beneficial to consider some research that measures comprehension of text read on digital media (screen) and contrasts it with comprehension of text read on tangible media (paper).

Research has shown that in the case of long, nonfiction texts “students of all ages, from elementary school to college, tend to absorb more when they’re reading on paper than on screens…”[1] Some postulate that “working your way through a print volume leaves spatial impressions that stick in your mind (for instance, the lingering memory of where a certain passage or diagram appeared in a book)”[2] in the way one remembers a hike in the woods as a series of discrete image episodes followed or preceded by other images (for example, you passed the red barn after you walked through the covered bridge but before you encountered the herd of goats).

The ability to constantly update digital texts can have an unintended consequence: context and lineal confusion. Post-publication editing, which is easy to accomplish in digital text, cannot be incorporated into a printed text. (For example, an article posted online in 2017 may include updated references to related articles published in 2019. This may be helpful for some, but the jumbling of dates can confuse the scholar reading for context and continuity.)

The length and detail of a text are the critical factors. According to the research, if you are reading more than 500 words, your comprehension goes up if you read from paper rather than a screen. There is some speculation about why this appears to be the case.

“Some experts think the glare and flicker of screens tax the brain more than paper. Others argue that spatial memory for the location of a passage or a chart on a physical paper page can help a student recall information … [the principal researcher suggested that] the problem might be one of rampant self-delusion by screen readers. In many of the lab studies, readers answered questions on how well they thought they had performed in the experiment. Screen readers consistently overestimated their reading comprehension. Paper readers were more accurate in their self-judgements.”[1]

The reason screen-reading students estimated they were performing better may have been based on their confounding speed with comprehension. They felt they read the digital text faster and reading faster meant reading better to them.

As dentists, we read to become more effective in our service to our patients. We read to become more efficient in our practices.

The researcher went on to hypothesize that “people who overestimate their abilities are likely to put in less effort. The less effort a person puts into a reading passage, the less they are likely to comprehend. That’s because reading comprehension, like all learning, isn’t easy and requires work.”[1]

This does not mean that reading from a screen is bad. These studies do not attempt to proclaim winners and losers in a world of electronic information. These investigations reflect that paper and digital media each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Whereas paper may prove more satisfying for devouring large amounts of detailed information, digital media may be more amenable to a number of smaller packets of information. It might be like the difference between enjoying a holiday feast as opposed to snacking between meals.

Some research went on to speculate that there are other advantages to digital media that might improve reading comprehension of longer texts: organization, embedded links, eye movement recognition, font color and size, etc. However, one researcher’s take-home message was “pick the format you personally prefer,” and for her college-aged study subjects, that was paper.[1]

Several studies have agreed that reading comprehension of longer, nonfiction text is measurably better when read from paper than screens. This finding, however, directly counters textbook publishers’ stated aims to emphasize digital texts going forward.[1]

The obvious advantages of digital textbooks include cost, portability and accessibility. But these comparative studies seem to indicate that for some purposes, text rendered in print might provide a measurable advantage.

So, what does this mean? Research emphasizes that both digital and paper have their place in our reading world. Snackable bits of easily understood information are reliably accessed on a screen. This might include abstracts and other items with a word count under 500 words. However, if you want to delve into a complex and lengthy text with a lot of detail, you may want to print that out and retreat to your couch to peruse the text on paper (remembering to recycle the paper afterward). This kind of information can help us prepare and present our communications in the most easily accessible and digestible form for our readers.

The Journal of the California Dental Association fulfills many goals. One of our most important goals is to communicate comprehensive and comprehensible information. We strive to be a trusted source of relevant information for our members, educators, policymakers and the public. We are in the process of reinventing the Journal in order to respond to changing trends in reader habits and preferences as well as establishing our niche within the system of oral health information and the publishing world in general. We strive to make the information you need, the information you can use, available and easily accessible.

So whether you are ready to sit down and devour an in-depth, detailed article or just snack on brief information pieces, take a place at our table. Join us here at the Journal of the California Association. Our mission is to help you read to succeed.

REFERENCES

1. Barshay J. Evidence increases for reading on paper instead of screens; Aug. 12, 2019. hechingerreport.org/ evidence-increases-for-reading-on-paper-instead-of-screens.

2. Wallis C. A textbook dilemma: Digital or paper? Aug. 23, 2017. hechingerreport.org/textbook-dilemma-digital-paper.