Well, as it turns out:
Neuroscience, in fact, has revealed that humans use different parts of the brain when reading from a piece of paper or from a screen. So the more you read on screens, the more your mind shifts towards "non-linear" reading — a practice that involves things like skimming a screen or having your eyes dart around a web page. -pri.org
If you're interested in reading more about the changes in reading behavior on screen and off, pick up "Paper to Digital: Documents in the Information Age" by Dr Ziming Liu. He's a Professor at San Jose State in the Library and Information Science school.
**Anyone other than me recognize the book in the kindle in the picture? I read it recently: It's a version of the Cinderella story where Cinderella is a cyborg from the moon! (Of course she is!)
UPDATE
If you're doing this kind of research, here are some resources from the PRI.org article:
- Maryanne Wolf, Tufts University. Our ‘Deep Reading’ Brain: Its Digital Evolution Poses Questions. Nieman Reports.
- Wolf's book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain,
- Ziming Liu, San Jose State University. "Reading behavior in the digital environment: Changes in reading behavior over the past ten years". Journal of Documentation, Volume 61, Issue 6.
- Liu's book Paper to Digital: Documents in the Information Age
- Anne Mangen, University of Norway. (2014). Mystery story reading in pocket print book and on Kindle: possible impact on chronological events memory. Conference paper presentation, The International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media, Turin, Italy July 21-25
- Simone Benedetto , Véronique Drai-Zerbib, Marco Pedrotti, Geoffrey Tissier, Thierry Baccino. E-Readers and Visual Fatigue. December 27, 2013
Featured image from emertainmentmonthly.com
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