Cognitive Difference between Reading Paper and Electronic Texts

• Imagine parasitic worms that do not possess digestive, circulatory, respiratory or skeletal systems. Welcome to the tapeworm family. At one end of these animals there is a sucker, often with hooks, that attaches to the lining of the host’s intestine. The attached end, called the scolex, is followed by flattened segments that repeat themselves, one after another, to form a long, ribbon-like chain. These segments are specialized for only one thing: egg reproduction. How long are these chains? Taenia saginata, the common beef tapeworm, and the pork tapeworm, Taenia solium, are 15-30 feet, but Diphyllobothrium latum, a common fish tapeworm, reaches up to about 60 feet in length. These worms absorb nutrients from the host’s intestine, and they sometimes infest humans. The incidence of fish tapeworm in humans is increasing because of the popularity of sushi, especially in Europe and Japan, and even in the U.S. there are an estimated 1,000 cases a year. (Hyde, K., 2004, 3rd edition, An Inside View of Animal Zoology; medicinenewstoday/human/tapeworm; Noble and Noble, 1964m 2nd edition, Parasitology, The Biology of Animal Parasites, Lea and Febiger, Philadelphia)

• Recently, off the coast of Southern California, snorkelers found the snake-like body of a seldom-seen sea creature called the Oarfish. This huge fish was 18 feet long, but the record for Oarfish is 56 feet. These strange fish are flattened side to side and spend most of their lives hanging vertically at depths of 3,000 feet or so, using their small fins to maintain their position. They have no scales, a small mouth, and feed on plankton. This creature is probably the sea serpent of sailing legends. (nationalgeographic.com; nydailynews.com; huffpost.com).

• At least 100 articles have been written comparing reading a paper book with reading the same “book” on a Kindle, Nook or iPad. The early studies suggested that when people read stories or articles on a digital reader they read more slowly and remembered less. In most of the later studies where individuals, young and old, were asked whether they preferred paper to digital books, the nod was still given to paper books, although digital books made for convenience when moving from place to place.

A look at evolution may shed some light on these findings. Since writing evolved late in human history, we are not born with brain circuits dedicated to reading. Rather, our brains developed brand-new circuits for reading by weaving together ribbons of circuitry involving speaking, motor coordination and vision. As a result, the brain perceives letters as physical objects woven into a kind of textural landscape. Reading depends on two kinds of memory: that of remembering and that of knowing.

One group of volunteers found that they “remembered” what was in a digital text, but with paper text they felt they both remembered and knew what they read. Paper books provide the reader with a tactile sense of topography, as well as awareness of the left and right pages and eight corner domains, which help carry the reader through the text. Even the thickness of read and unread pages helps form a more coherent mental map of the text. Regardless, whether to read a book or digital text is a personal choice between the feel of a paper book or reading digital text on a screen. (Ferris Jabr, 2013, “Why the Brain Prefers Paper,” Scientific American, September issue; Sellen and Harper, 2001, The Myth of the Paperless Office, MIT Press)