RECENT NEWS: READING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

A story from January 31 in Science News concerning American research into the possible negative effects of digital technology on critical thinking and analysis piggybacks nicely onto my last Recent News piece on a Norwegian study that reached nearly the same conclusions.

In Norway, Anne Mangen, a psychologist at the Center for Reading Research at the University of Stavanger, said "there is generally little reflection around digital teaching material" and that, "The whole field is characterized by an easy acceptance...."

Discussing work done in our country, Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles, states, "Wiring classrooms for Internet access does not enhance learning."

Both of these experts are quick to emphasize that they are not proscribing the use of digital media. "By using more visual media, students will process information better," Greenfield notes.

A study at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee confirms this. When a Psych 101 course replaced traditional lecture format with an on-line curriculum, student achievement improved.

What both Mangen and Greenfield are advocating is more encouragement of what we might call "analog" reading, and recognition of the advantages and disadvantages of different media.

"The digital hypertext technology and its use of multimedia," Mangen notes, "are not open to the experience of a fictional universe where the experience consists of creating your own mental images. The reader gets distracted by the opportunities for doing something else."

As someone who spends way too much time on the internet, I can identify.

Greenfield points out that "visual media are real-time media that do not allow time for reflection, analysis or imagination." Furthermore, she says, "Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary. Reading for pleasure is the key to developing these skills. Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy. Many students do not read for pleasure and have not for decades."

Children, it appears, need text on the printed page as well as the screen. A three-year-old can recognize the difference between the two and draw a different sort of pleasure from a book than from the family computer.

This is an issue that Maryanne Wolf addresses in her fabulous and very readable book, Proust and the Squid. Wolf will be speaking about this very subject at an International Dyslexia Association event in Palo Alto on March 14. Her lecture is titled "The Evolving Reading Brain and the Digital Age: A Tale of Caution and Optimism for Parents and Teachers."