Study finds Kindle readers have difficulty remembering plot
A new study has found that Kindle readers have greater difficulty recalling the plot of a story than paperback readers, reports the Guardian. In the study, researchers gave 50 adult readers the same 28-page mystery story by Elizabeth George, with half reading from a Kindle and the other half reading from a paperback. Readers were then tested on various elements of the story. When it came to the timing of events, ‘Kindle readers performed significantly worse on the plot reconstruction measure, ie, when they were asked to place 14 events in the correct order,’ said Anne Mangen, an academic from Norway’s University of Stavanger, who presented the study at the Conference for the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media in Italy in July. In a previous study, which compared reading from print books and iPads, Mangen found ‘paper readers did report higher on measures having to do with empathy and transportation and immersion, and narrative coherence, than iPad readers.’ However, in the Kindle study, the ‘immersion’ and ‘emotional responses’ of both groups measured the same. The researchers suggest that the ‘tactile sense of progress’ when turning physical pages may help readers remember the chronological order of a plot.
Category: International news
