Reading articles from the screen or on paper: what’s better?

More and more students read articles on their laptop screen, tablet or smartphone. That saves a lot of prints. You can also easily scroll through large amounts of text and scan information more quickly, so you can read more in a shorter time. But can you better understand and remember the content when you read it from a screen?

Research has shown that students who read texts from paper score higher on text comprehension than those who read the same information from a screen. Scrolling negatively influences the reading process. And being able to make a mental reconstruction of the physical layout of the text (for example, where on the page – top right, something was written) ensures that you understand the text better. Of course you can also highlight the important parts, which is less easy on the screen text.

If you really need to learn something, for an exam or a paper for example, you’d better grab a physical book or printed article. This contributes to the understanding of the text and the giving of meaning, which is what you need to learn something! However, when you are orienting yourself on the content of a text, do not want to study something in depth or read something for your pleasure, you can read well from a screen.

Note: Be sure to check out Abstract Tube, their mission is to create a media-rich academic and research database. This can help you while doing research because images and video are a lot easier to remember than words without any image.