Paper vs. Screen: The Medium Isn’t The Message

Although study-after-study has shown students find it much easier to understand text when it’s presented in a paper-based printed format rather than a screen-based digital format, the use of something like digital textbooks has grown exponentially over the past decade or so.

Proponents of screen-based technology have tended to argue digital learning is not only cheaper, more-flexible and versatile than it’s paper-based alternative, but that the measured difference in student comprehension and understanding between paper and screen is largely a function of cultural lag.

The argument here is that while it exists now, at some point in the future the discrepancy will disappear because the difference is due to a materiality difference between paper and screen or, as Hou et al (2017) put it:

“The materiality of the reading medium influences text processing. Text on paper is touchable and tangible, whereas text on screens is intangible, mediated, and detached from the physical support of the reading medium. The haptic interactions with paper text [i.e. the feel of the material] afford readers richer sensorimotor engagement with the text compared to screen text, which enhances information encoding and comprehension”.

In other words, the feel of paper in our hands stimulates our senses and means the reader engages more-closely with the text. This, in turn, results in greater comprehension.

For digital evangelists this materiality-gain is something that will gradually disappear as education moves further and further online. As things currently stand most students still have the comparative experience of digital and non-digital text. At some point in the (near) future a generation of students will be educated solely with digital resources – and since they will have no memory or experience of paper, the materiality effect will simply disappear…

Which, all things considered, sounds plausible.

Except, what if the medium isn’t actually the message?

What if there are more-complex, more-fundamental, factors at play here?

Cognitive Maps

This is a question Hou et al. explored by way of arguing that the key reason students understand paper-based information more-thoroughly than the same information presented digitally is that our brains process information through a mechanism called cognitive mapping.

In a nutshell, the argument here is that the mental maps we build from the information we receive relies upon spacial cues and anchors that tie this information to our understanding. In other words, we understand more in the real world because that comprehension is anchored spatially by the physical dimensions of whatever we’re holding and reading.

For example, with a printed textbook we cognitively locate, map and anchor information across three dimensions of space: height, breadth and, most importantly, depth. In this instance, there are a range of spatial cues involved, such as where pages appear in the book (depth) and the position on the page of the individual words, sentences and paragraphs we read (height and breadth).

With the same information in digital format we lose some fundamental spatial cues – digital pages lack depth, for example – and hence anchors. It’s precisely because we find it more difficult to  anchor digital texts in the same way we anchor non-digital texts that we tend to understand and recall less information digitally.

Unlike the materiality explanation, cognitive mapping poses much more fundamental problems for digital evangelists (and digital publishers) because it suggests the comprehension difference is a function of how our brains process information.

And that’s not something that will simply disappear over time.

Postscript

The implications of this research for digital publishers are clear in that it suggests digital texts will always lose out to their non-digital counterparts in terms of the extent to which they aid teaching and learning.

However, digital publishing does have one very big advantage over paper-based textbooks – the ability to add audio and video into the mix. In addition to creating opportunities for dual-coding, integrating audio and / or video into a digital textbook potentially closes the cognitive learning gap between digital and non-digital texts because these media are inherently two-dimensional.

There are, in other words, the same cognitive reference points for the learner whether the media is viewed on a computer screen or a TV screen…

Reference

Jinghui Hou, Justin Rashid and Kwan Min Lee (2017): “Cognitive map or medium materiality? Reading on paper and screen”