

Recent data from in book markets show rocketing sales of digital books and a consequent fall in printed book sales. Jim Milliot, editorial director of Publishers Weekly magazine, said “It seems likely that, at least in the short term, digital book sales will settle somewhere between 10% and 20% of the total market” (2014). Librarians are considering whether or not traditional books will survive in the future despite a growing industry of reading technology devices. Before substituting traditional platform for reading, educators, students and all readers related to books should be aware of not only of advantages but of shortcomings as well. In order to compare different ways of reading we should consider different reading platforms: print books, electronic books and books being read on smartphones or computers. Although, advantages of electronic reading are prevailing and technology development will keep enhancing the convenience and ease of electronic reading, comprehension still remains the main estimator of reading and reading purpose. The difference of comprehension reading on different platforms might be found in superior optics, cognitive availability and metacognitive suitability, where one platform may prevail towards another and will lead the future book market. 


Better comprehension of reading requires better visual focus, what suppose not only external distraction factors but also reduction of eye blinking. Blinking depends on the rate of eyes’ tear evaporation. Condition of dry eyes might also cause fatigue, headache, poor vision. It has been experimentally demonstrated that ocular discomfort and perceptual difficulty, regardless of the reading platform, can compromise one’s ability to learn from a text, a phenomenon that becomes more pronounced as the duration of a reading session is lengthened and the difficulty of the text is increased (Conlon & Sanders 206). When the optical ill effects of reading on paper and computer screens are compared, the digital text consistently rates far worse, though the transition from cathode ray tube (CRT), elements used in production of liquid crystal displays (LCDs), have somewhat improved the optics of computer reading (Benedetto 8).  It is possible that in the future, screen technology will get improved and make reading on a computer closer to reading on paper; however, in recent research by optometrist Mark Rosenfield mentioned that “With printed books, however, which are read at a lower angle, a more closed eye position and complete eye blinks are maintained” (64), which means that dry eye effect is caused not only by display, but also by the actual angle of screen reading. Taking into consideration that the biggest advantage of laptop and desktop computer reading is multitasking and interaction with a keyboard, the horizontal position of display is inevitable. In terms of the visual discomfort caused by dry eyes, what impacts reading comprehension, printed books are superior to digital screen reading, especially if you try to read long and challenging text. For this reason, technologies are being improved and the latest versions of eBooks use e-paper technology, which is very similar to the printed text on paper, instead of LCDs, e-paper   displays reflect light as traditional printed page does. Those latest improvements challenged the existence of printed books. In recent experiments, cognitive ergonomist researcher Simone Bendetto, confirmed that e-paper is the optical equivalent of print on paper. Bendetto’s research found that blinking rate while reading on eBooks and printed books is 0.6 blinks per second and 0.4 blinks per second while reading on LCD. All this evidence about superiority of printed platform and e-paper over LCD seems reliable, however, the study performed by linguist Franziska Kretzschmar, in which she compared reading experience on different platforms from focus groups of different age. The study found that older people read with greatest ease and understanding from LCDs, rather than younger adults who had no difference in comprehension reading on three different platforms. (Kretzschmar 65). The older people preference of LCDs might be related to the high contrast of displays. This study might be absolute opposite opinion on the problem, however the text used in study was comparatively shorter than in Bendetto’s and Harris’ experiment. Also, the text size used in Kretzschmar’s experiment was larger comparing to other’s researchers. All that point on biased studying in the authors experiment. Summarizing the research above we can see the unique features and functionalities of all three platforms. For short reading sessions LCDs might be more suitable, that may explain why a lot of people prefer reading newspapers and magazines, because of greater convenience of online sources. When it comes to long reading sessions and more challenging texts, e-paper and printed version are more in favor because of less eye constrain causes, also eye constrain might be reduced by increasing font size and line spacing. Additionally, for older readers with poor vision, LCD platforms are more preferred because of high contrast, what provides ease and enhanced comprehension.


Although in the previous section all studies were focused on the optical challenge and reading comprehension, previously mentioned reading science experts, Bendetto and Kretzschmar, stress that preference of the reader is the most important factor. Both studies show preference for printed books over both digital platforms. “Even the current generation of young people, the digital natives who should have no cultural bias for the printed word, report in survey after survey that they prefer learning from books to learning from screens; many report that if they do discover an important text on the internet they are likely to print it out before attempting in-depth reading” (Jabr). It might be suggested that preference for printed platform over LCD and eBook goes beyond optical issues and cause by other possible reason as cognition and the way our brain processes and stores text in our mind. 

In the video “The History of Reading and the Literature Life”, Seth Lerer, a literature professor at UC San Diego, discusses the history of reading to demonstrate how reading has developed from ancient Greece to nowadays to show how reading has changed human’s cognition (Lerer). It is important to understand how unique printed texts for our reading brain can be, there are no genetic or biological structures allowing us to read, we read by connecting neural structures originally developed for vision, recognition and spoken language. “The same cognitive structures that evolved for navigation and communication in the physical world have been adapted to accomplish the learned behavior of reading” (Wolf 15). In other words, letters and words that we read exist as real objects in specific location, that is why, reading printed books we try to locate particular information on the exact page of a book. Psychologist Anne Mangen found the same in her experiment, “Paging back through a text to find a particular passage remembered by its location is the cognitive equivalent of retracing one’s steps through a forest, searching for familiar landmarks along the way” (65). Obviously, when trying to study from a virtual text, the reader is deprived of this ability to associate thoughts with real-world locations. The experiment established by Mangen supports the idea that physical existing of text affect reading comprehension. First group was given to read unpaged four-page text, while second group read the same paged text. The second group performed better on a comprehension test. After the experiment Mangen concluded, “. . . the fixity of text printed on paper supports a reader’s construction of the spatial representation of the text by providing unequivocal and fixed spatial cues for text memory and recall” (66). Even if eBooks were not included in the experiment because the difference between eBooks and printed pages is the way two platforms provide a text to reader, where in order to list page on eBook reader should tap on the screen, what allows to locate information only in two dimensions, rather the sense you list a physical book. So in this case reading on eBook is similar to LCD reading in terms of cognition. 

In the article “The reading brain in the digital age: The science of paper versus screens”, science writer Ferris Jabr explain this phenomenon on the examples of hyperlinks, that digital platforms designed as a number of hyperlinks with nonlinear structure. Jabr describes reading with hyperlinks in interesting manner, “Instead of hiking the trail yourself, the trees, rocks, and moss move past you in flashes with no trace of what came before and no way to see what lies ahead.” The cognitive distraction caused by clickable text or turning pages by tapping is a considerable problem of digital devices.  In the article “Both lexical and Non-Lexical characters are processed during saccadic eye movements”, psychologist H. Zhang explain how actions like following a hyperlink or changing a page on the eBook, which can not be traced by the eye, can cause lack of lexical understanding of the following information. The lack of enthusiasm on the part of many for eBooks may be explained by what two researchers in information management are referring to as the “haptic dissonance” of e-readers. 


Despite the efforts of engineers to improve the optical reproduction of computers and electronic books, the display and ease of navigation on digital texts, many professors prefer a printed version of the book, especially when it comes to long and complex materials. This mass preference is explained by the complexity of the reader to learn from digital texts, which is related to the peculiarity of the physical significance of the text and the metacognitive method of research is one of the fundamental in choosing a platform for learning. Metacognition is understanding of your own thinking process and memory ability, in other words, it is a knowledge of what you know. Rakefet Ackerman is a leading researcher in the metacognitive strategies people employ when reading, and his investigations reveal significant differences between the print and digital platforms. In a 2010 experiment, Ackerman tested college students’ ability to actively study and learn from five different challenging expository texts of about 1,200 words each, on both digital and paper platforms. Both groups of students were encouraged to underline, highlight, and take marginal notes, the digital group using familiar word processing tools, and the paper group writing with pencils and highlighters on the printed texts. When the students in the two test conditions were limited in the amount of time they could spend with their texts, on-screen performance was nearly identical to on-paper performance; comprehension questions were answered with about 62% accuracy (Ackerman & Goldsmith 4). However, when the experiment was repeated with a new selection expository texts, and the students were allowed as much time as they thought necessary to interact with and come to an understanding of the material, the group using pens on paper earned test scores about 10 points higher than their virtual-learning counterparts. While the enhanced learning of the paper and pens condition may not in itself be surprising, a second finding does shed new light on the ability of readers of real-world texts to self-regulate their cognitive process: In both experiments, the on-paper learners were able to predict their performance on the comprehension test with reasonable accuracy (to within 4 percentage points on average), while the on-screen learners greatly overestimated how well they knew the material (by 10 percentage points on average)(Ackerman & Goldsmith 2). Not only was it more difficult for the virtual learners to understand the material put before them, they also had a harder time judging their degree of understanding. On some level, however, it seems that student readers often question their ability to learn from digital texts, and it is this “metacognitive judgment” that leads them to print out on-screen materials when deeper study and literal pen-to-paper interaction with readings are required (Ackerman & Goldsmith 6). 

Two other investigations into the use and effectiveness of metacognitive strategies are worth considering, as they indicate that these study aids might not be necessary when a text, whether printed or virtual, is less challenging to the reader. In a 2003 experiment led by College Board researcher Jennifer Korbin, it was found that, when on-screen and on-paper GRE sample tests were administered to college students, the option to underline and take notes had no measurable effect on students’ scores. It was observed that students using the paper condition did underline important information more frequently, possibly indicating a greater comfort with actual as opposed to virtual interaction with a text. “It seems likely, however, that this metacognitive strategy was simply not necessary, given that the reading passage under consideration was grade level appropriate and only 55 lines long” (Korbin & Young 120). 

A second investigation, undertaken in 2013 by psychologist Sara J. Margolin, compared student comprehension test scores on 500-word narrative and expository texts that were read on paper, on e-paper readers, and on LCD computers. After comprehension tests were completed, subjects self-reported the metacognitive strategies that they had employed while reading. In terms of students’ test scores, the most significant finding is that they performed the worst on the test for the expository passage read on the e-reader platform, by four points on a hundred-point scale. While this performance difference may be slight, it is significant because the greatest difference in metacognitive strategy was also found among the users of e-readers, in their reluctance to review previously read passages by virtually turning back pages. After conducting the experiment Margolin said, “It seems that the perceived unwieldiness of screen-tapping to turn pages did negatively impact comprehension of expository texts on the e-reader platform” (2013).

Metacognitive strategies as taking notes, highlighting and overlooking material are so important aspects of comprehension of challenging texts, hence, students and educators should know how to apply these strategies to digital texts. As the abovementioned studies indicate, learning on paper with pen in hand is more effective to the extent that a text presents a cognitive challenge because of its length or difficulty. 



As this essay demonstrates, print books are still the best suited to the optical, cognitive, and metacognitive requirements of the reading brain. E-paper technology has been proven as equivalent to printed version books, however, it doesn’t have enough tangibility as book, which are very important for comprehension. E-readers also lack the touching qualities that readers enjoy about books, and seem only willing to give up only when convenience and portability prevail. In terms of metacognition, e- readers provide limited opportunities for text interaction, while virtual page turning has been demonstrated to discourage review of previously read material. Computer texts have all the limitations of e-readers without the e-paper technology, and the additional cognitive problem of distractions from multitasking. Hyperlinks, once thought to streamline the learning process, have instead proven to interrupt the seamlessness of the reading process from perception to thought processing, and this is when they are passed over. If links are actually followed, the lack of textual linearity is sure to lead to confusion. When learning from a text is the objective of reading, printed books will remain the preferred format. 

For better comprehension readers should be aware of all factors described in this paper. Comprehension is various in terms of different platforms, therefore more challenging texts is better be read on printed sources, however small articles with short reading session are acceptable from digital platforms. Also eBooks, using e-liquid technologies eliminated eye strain effect, however hyperlinks quantity and other distraction should be decreased to minimum. Tangibility and direct interaction between reader and book is very important for better comprehension, however, now it is important to implement all tangible features of printed books in digital platforms, therefore educators and readers should be aware to chose right reading platform regarding to reading purpose.
