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The Fate of Reading : Internet, Media, and the Brain

The Fate of Reading : Internet, Media, and the Brain. Images: (l) Wikimedia Commons (m) Vinckier, Cohen et al Neuron 2007 (r) David Maxwell (NYT) 20130113. Vincent W. Hevern, SJ, Ph.D. COR 400 September 19, 2019. 1 What are the Internet and Digital Media Doing to Our Brains? Some Claims….

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The Fate of Reading : Internet, Media, and the Brain

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  1. The Fate of Reading:Internet, Media, and the Brain Images: (l) Wikimedia Commons (m) Vinckier, Cohen et al Neuron 2007 (r) David Maxwell (NYT) 20130113 Vincent W. Hevern, SJ, Ph.D. COR 400 September 19, 2019

  2. 1What are the Internet and Digital Media Doing to Our Brains? Some Claims…

  3. “Neuroscientists and psychologists have discovered that, even as adults, our brains are very plastic. They're very malleable, they adapt at the cellular level to whatever we happen to be doing. And so the more time we spend surfing, and skimming, and scanning ... the more adept we become at that mode of thinking.” [E]ven if people get better at hopping from page to page, they will still be losing their abilities to employ a "slower, more contemplative mode of thought." …[R]esearch shows that as people get better at multitasking, they "become less creative in their thinking.” (Nicholas Carr, NPR Interview, 6/2/2010) 2010

  4. NY Times, February 23, 2019 Negative impact of cell phone?

  5. The harms of the Internet and new media for child development "are not direct ones...Instead, they affect children's emotional, social, and cognitive development in subtle ways that change long-term habits, orientations, and values in undesirable ways...[N]ew media stifle and weaken their users’ imaginations. This is an entirely novel condition, one to which children have never before been exposed. Continuous exposure to imagination-suppressing media now begins at the very youngest ages. We argue that this can pose long-term consequences for the development of children’s creativity and creative imagination" (p. xiii) 2019

  6. 2The Four Major Modes of Communications Media: Orality and Literacy in Historical Context

  7. • Media historians/theorists propose 4 major shifts in communication: Orality, Chirography (Writing), Print, and today’s Techno-Digital Age • For most of human history, most humans only communicated orally • Even after the invention of writing systems, reading was an activity for a relatively small percentage of humanity until the early 20th century

  8. • Before the 16th century, fewer than 20% of Europeans were able to read • In the early 1800s, fewer than 20% of people in the world were literate • I’ll return to literacy at the end of this lecture

  9. Since 1987 computing industry has a standard for display of characters • Version 12.1 (2019) contains 137,929 characters from 150 modern and historic scripts (plus emojis and other symbol sets) Unicode Consortium

  10. 3 Neurobiology of Vision & Reading: How Do We Process Text?

  11. Professor of Experimental Cognitive Psychology at the Collège de France Director of the INSERM-CEA Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Service HospitalierFrédéric Joliot, Orsay, France 2009

  12. Dehaene, 2012

  13. Literacy & Biopsychology • Our visual recognition system (VRS) is attuned to line junctions and other invariants of shape in the environment • Plasticity of the VRS is sufficient to be reoriented or changed toward the shapes of written words • Scripts across human cultures were crafted to shapes that fit with human brain architecture • Developing literacy takes time and effort (beginning with learning letters and graphemes) to mold the brain Dehaene, 2012

  14. 4Reading in the Age of Digitization: Digital vs. Paper Text

  15. • Media devices become hand-held and portable after 2007 • • Elaborated infrastructure for digital media access (wifi & cellular) • • Development of multiple social media sites & functions • • Rise of diversified information sources online • * Newspapers, magazines, digital news media • * Government & scientific information (journals, etc.)

  16. 2017 • How print vs. digital reading are defined in not consistent in research • There is no comprehensive answer to whether “digital” vs “paper” reading is “better” (though see below for specific details). • The nature and scope of digital devices has changed significantly in the last two decades. • Digital reading is not going away: society has embraced it. • For texts longer than a single page (i.e., > 500 words), reading in print leads to greater comprehension than digitally. • When reading for “depth of understanding” rather than just the “gist” of the material, paper was better than digital. • The more complex the idea content of text, the greater the advantage of reading in print rather than digitally • “Digital Natives” (those who grew up in a digital world) do not show an advantage in using digital over paper texts.

  17. 2018 • Analyzed research studies of digital text without links (which is more similar to printed text). • Screen reading is inferior to printed text reading in respect to comprehension (across all age groups) • The advantage of paper text (vs. digital) • has increased from 2000 to 2017 • Is larger when reading information versus “narrative” texts • Is stronger when reading is time-limited • The failure of “Digital natives” to show greater comprehension to screen-based texts may be the result of poorer attention behavior (that is, not immersing oneself in the text at a sufficient level).

  18. Stimulus: 28-page (about 10,800 words; ca. 1 hour reading time) mystery story by Elizabeth George, titled Lusting for Jenny, Inverted. • Participants: N = 50 (32F) 23 years old, 4.2 years of college; split equally between Print vs. Kindle • Few differences except Print > Kindle on reconstructing plot time /chronology (especially early in story)

  19. Impact on students with ADHD or disabilities

  20. Reading in the era of digitization • Comprehension reading long-form text on a screen tends to be either the same or inferior to print • More demanding reading (e.g., greater depth of understanding) suffers more than leisure reading • Readers are more likely to be overconfident about comprehension abilities for screen vs. print text • Screen inferiority is INCREASING over time (no “digital native” effect) • Digital text is much more flexible than print to support struggling readers & adjust to individual needs • Screen/print equivalence can be achieved with conscious efforts to engage in depth-processing Kovač & van der Weel (2018b)

  21. 5The Overlooked Problem: Illiteracy & Impaired Literacy in the United States

  22. Illiteracy & Impaired Literacy in the US • 1980s: low estimate = 13-16% unable to read English • National Adult Literacy Survey (2002) • Low: 21-23% vs. High 3-4% • Low includes 35% < 9 years of school; 51% White; 33% over 65 years, 26% disability • PIAAC (2012-14) Program for Int’l Assessment of Adult Competencies

  23. Discussion • Do you experience difficulty in understanding or comprehending certain kinds of texts? • Do you prefer online or paper text? • What is your attention span like? • What makes it harder or easier to study? • What techniques or strategies do you use to improve your comprehension?

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