The inattentive on-screen reading: Reading medium affects attention and reading comprehension under time pressure

Teleassessment can overestimate the risk of learning disability in first and second grade of primary school

BACKGROUND

Early administration of reading, writing and math standardised tests allows us to assess the risk of developing a learning disorder and to plan a specific intervention. The ease of access to technological tools and past pandemic restrictions have led to the abandonment of face-to-face assessment in favour of teleassessment methods. Although these kinds of assessments sometimes seem comparable in the literature, their equivalence is not clearly defined. The first aim of our research was to test the comparability of the two modalities using a complete battery of neuropsychological tests. Second, we addressed whether the administration order could influence performance.

METHODS

Using a within-subject sample design, we compared face-to-face and teleassessment performance in reading, writing and math tasks in 64 children attending first and second year of primary school.

RESULTS

Teleassessment scores were lower than face-to-face; math tests weighted on difference. Differences were mitigated by previous experience with face-to-face modality.

CONCLUSIONS

Although there was considerable overlap between the two administration methods, teleassessment could lead to overestimation of the risk for learning disorders.

Don't Throw Away Your Notebook: Effects of Task Difficulty and Presentation Medium on Memory Performance

People are increasingly reliant on various electrical devices for learning and memory, yet the implications and consequences of this dependence remain poorly understood. The present study aimed to investigate how learning through electrical media impacts recall under varying task difficulties. During this study, participants encoded information related to daily life situations (low difficulty), academic conceptual knowledge (middle difficulty), or associative word pairs (high difficulty), presented on smartphones, computers, or paper. At test, they recalled the omitted content based on the provided cue information. A significant screen-inferiority effect was observed for both computers and smartphones. However, the impairment related to computers disappeared in the retrieval of daily life situations and academic conceptual knowledge, whereas the impairment associated with smartphones was consistently present across all tasks. These results suggest that memory performance is modulated by the interaction between the presentation medium and the specific demands of the task, highlighting a more pronounced screen-inferiority memory effect when the media restrict the depth of processing or when the memory tasks pose greater external challenges. A deeper understanding of these factors can guide the optimization of electrical devices to enhance human memory abilities and functions.

Dynamic reading in a digital age: new insights on cognition

People increasingly read text displayed on digital devices, including computers, handheld e-readers, and smartphones. Given this, there is rapidly growing interest in understanding how the cognitive processes that support the reading of static text (e.g., books, magazines, or newspapers) might be adapted to reading digital texts. Evidence from recent experiments suggests a complex interplay of visual and cognitive influences on how people engage with digital reading. Although readers can strategically adjust their reading behaviors in response to their immediate reading context, the efficacy of these strategies depends on cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational factors. A better understanding of the factors that influence reading offers the promise of leveraging digital technologies to enhance the reading experience.

Effects of finger and mouse pointing on learning from online split-attention examples

BACKGROUND

Self-management of cognitive load is a recent development in cognitive load theory. Finger pointing has been shown to be a potential self-management strategy to support learning from spatially separated, but mutually referring text and pictures (i.e., split-attention examples).

AIMS

The present study aimed to extend the prior research on the pointing strategy and investigated the effects of finger pointing on learning from online split-attention examples. Moreover, we examined an alternative pointing strategy using the computer mouse, and a combination of finger pointing and computer-mouse pointing.

SAMPLE

One-hundred and forty-five university students participated in the present study.

METHOD

All participants studied an online split-attention example about the human nervous system and were randomly allocated to one of four conditions: (1) pointing with the index finger, (2) pointing with the computer mouse, (3) pointing with the index finger and the computer mouse and (4) no pointing.

RESULTS

Results confirmed our main hypothesis, indicating that finger pointing led to higher retention performance than no pointing. However, the mouse pointing strategy and the combined finger and mouse pointing strategy did not show supportive effects.

CONCLUSIONS

Finger pointing can be used as a simple and convenient self-management strategy in online learning environments. Mouse pointing may not be as effective as finger pointing.

The screen inferiority depends on test format in reasoning and meta-reasoning tasks

Influential work has confirmed screen inferiority in reading tasks that reading on screen is less productive than reading on paper. Recent researches suggest that poor cognitive performance in screen environments may be primarily due to cognitive defects rather than technological flaws. Although some studies have explored screen inferiority in reasoning tasks from cognitive and metacognitive perspectives, related theories have yet to be enriched. Here, we found that screen inferiority exists in reasoning performance regardless of the test format (multiple-choice VS. open-ended), which may result from shallow processing consistent with the previous findings. However, meta-reasoning monitoring showed screen inferiority only in the multiple-choice test format. Our results indicate that the screens exhibit robust inferiority in reasoning scores, while the influence of the media on meta-reasoning may vary with external triggers. Our research may shed light on how to conduct efficient reasoning in the screen age.

What breaks the flow of reading? A study on characteristics of attentional disruption during digital reading

Reading is increasingly taking place on digital media, which are vectors of attentional disruption. This manuscript aims to characterize attentional disruption during reading on a computer screen in an ecological environment. To this end, we collected information relating to reader interruptions (number, type, duration, position, mental effort, and valence) and self-caught mind wandering (occurrence, position) throughout the reading session for high and low media multitaskers in their own specific ecological environment, at home. Comprehension of the narrative text was assessed both with surface and inferential questions. In total, 74 participants (M = 22.16, SD = 2.35) took part in the experiment. They reported attentional disruptions on average every 4 mins during reading. Moreover, there were more attentional disruptions during the first half of the text. Most interruptions were short and little mental effort was required to process them. We made a distinction between media-related and media-unrelated related interruptions. Multiple linear regression analyses showed that media-unrelated interruptions were actually related to better performance for both inferential and surface level questions. Furthermore, media-related interruptions were more frequent for high than low media multitaskers. Pleasure experienced when reading the text was also a significant predictor of comprehension. The results are discussed with regard to Long-Term Working Memory and strategies that the readers could have implemented to recover the thread of their reading.

The effects of university students' fragmented reading on cognitive development in the new media age: evidence from Chinese higher education

Introduction

The impacts of fragmented reading have been felt on a huge scale during the new media age. An increasingly fast-paced society and a corresponding drop in theoretical reading have affected reading literacy and cognitive development across communities-and among university students in particular. This study sought to identify the components of fragmented reading and cognitive development and investigate the former's effects on the latter among university students in the new media age.

Methods

Paper-based and electronic surveys were used to gather demographic and related-reading data from undergraduates at six Chinese universities in early 2021. After testing the data from 916 samples for reliability and validity, descriptive statistics were obtained and path analysis was undertaken using structural equation modeling.

Results

The students reported relatively high levels of fragmented reading, particularly in its temporal form. Significant associations were found between the constructs of fragmented reading and cognitive development. Specifically, the fragmentation of content, time, and attention in reading behavior had significant, positive effects on cognitive breadth. However, each of these components was somewhat negatively associated with cognitive depth.

Conclusions

The findings disclosed the dual effects of fragmented reading on the cognitive development of students, opening a new perspective on this debate. As fragmented reading in the new media age grows inexorably, the study highlights the need to utilize its positive effects on cognitive development by integrating and classifying fragmented information into the mental maps of learners.

Relation between digital tool practices in the language arts classroom and reading comprehension scores

Concerns about the negative effects of digitalization on students' reading comprehension, empirically backed by recent meta-analyses, question the efficacy of digital tools in the language arts classroom. By analyzing data from 4 and 8th grade US students from NAEP 2017, we aimed to test the generalization of the negative association between screens use and reading comprehension test scores within language arts classrooms, and to identify teachers' practices to support comprehension, which could reduce such a negative relationship. We used data from 149,400 4th grade and 144,900 8th grade students to predict their reading comprehension scores based on their frequency of use of digital devices in the language arts class, as well as on the specific learning activities performed with such devices. Results revealed that amount of daily use of digital devices was negatively related to scores on a reading comprehension test. In addition, teachers' uses of digital tools to support students' reading comprehension showed positive relations for student use of digital devices for reading projects, and negative relations for activities addressing specific reading skills, such as building and practicing vocabulary. We discuss these results in light of our current understanding of the effects of digitalization on reading.

Combining Dynamic Network Analysis and Cerebral Carryover Effect to Evaluate the Impacts of Reading Social Media Posts and Science Fiction in the Natural State on the Human Brain

Social media has been associated with decreased attention, memory, and learning abilities; however, the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Dynamic function network connectivity (dFNC) analysis is suitable for uncovering dynamical brain activity. Besides, the effects of a cognitive task may persist for a while on the brain, even after the termination of the task, also known as the carryover effect. Consequently, we combined the dFNC analysis and cerebral carryover effects to study the brain dynamics of reading social media posts in the natural state and comparatively investigated the brain dynamics of reading science fiction on the smartphone. We performed functional MRI (fMRI) scans of all subjects at baseline and then assigned them a social media post or science fiction reading task. Immediately after, another fMRI scanning was performed for these subjects. We found that the change between dFNC states, the number of dFNC states, and the total distances increased after reading science fiction. Furthermore, the global, local, and nodal efficiencies of the deep-thinking state tended to increase after reading science fiction. On reading social media posts, the functional connectivity (FC) between the default mode network (DMN) and bilateral frontoparietal network (FPN) decreased, while the FC between DMN and visual network (VN) increased. Given the current evidence, we concluded that reading science fiction could substantially increase brain activity and network efficiency, while social media was related to abnormal FCs between DMN, VN, and FPN.

Media Multitasking: A Bibliometric Approach and Literature Review

Media multitasking became increasingly popular over the past decade. As this behavior is intensely taxing cognitive resources, it has raised interest and concerns among academics in a variety of fields. Consequently, in recent years, research on how, when, and why people media multitask has strongly emerged, and the consequences of the behavior for a great variety of outcomes (such as working memory, task performance, or socioemotional outcomes) have been explored. While efforts are made to summarize the findings of media multitasking research until date, these meta, and literature studies focused on specific research subdomains. Therefore, the current study adopted a quantitative method to map all studies in the broad field of media multitasking research. The bibliometric and thematic content analyses helped us identifying five major research topics and trends in the overall media multitasking domain. While media multitasking research started by studying its prevalence, appearance, and predictors, early research within the domain was also interested in the impact of this media consumption behavior on individuals' cognitive control and academic performance. Later on in 2007, scholars investigated the implications of media multitasking on the processing of media- and persuasive content, while its impact on socioemotional well-being received attention ever since 2009. Our analyses indicate that research within the field of media multitasking knows a dominant focus on adolescents, television watching, and cognitive depletion. Based on these findings, the paper concludes by discussing directions for future research.