The benefits of reading for children are very broad and well-known, from improving their vocabulary and grammar, to encouraging their imagination and creativity. But what is not so evident is that the format in which they read influences the reading comprehension of children.
Digital reading formats are increasingly popular, using mobile phones, tablets, computers and electronic books to consult stories, books, comics and other online publications, such as articles in the digital press or texts on social networks and blogs. . Although the habit of reading is positive in any way, the truth is that it would be advisable to encourage reading on paper in children.
A study by the Interdisciplinary Reading Research Structure (ERI) of the University of Valencia (UV), published in the journal Review of Educational Research, concludes that reading for leisure on paper helps reading comprehension to a greater extent than if carried out on digital media. The researchers confirmed that there was abundant previous research that demonstrated a positive relationship between habits of reading printed texts for leisure and reading comprehension. Given the rapid evolution of new forms of digital reading for leisure, they decided to check if this could modify this relationship.
Therefore, they conducted a meta-analysis to expand previous research, analyzing the relationship between leisure digital reading habits and reading comprehension. Specifically, in the meta-research they reviewed 25 studies with 39 comparisons between the years 2000 and 2022, involving more than 460,000 participants.
“The main conclusion is that leisure reading habits on screen are minimally related to reading comprehension, which contrasts with the solid positive relationship between reading habits on paper and comprehension,” explains Lidia Altamura, researcher at the ERI of Reading of the UV and first signatory of the article.
“From what we know from other studies, the relationship between the frequency of reading printed texts and text comprehension is much higher (between 0.30 and 0.40) than what we found for leisure digital reading habits ( 0.05). This means, for example, that if a student spends 10 hours reading books on paper, their comprehension will probably be 6 to 8 times greater than if they read on digital devices for the same amount of time,” explain Cristina Vargas and Ladislao Salmerón, professor and professor in the Department of Evolutionary and Educational Psychology at the UV.
They also verified that the majority of the digital reading habits analyzed – both social networks and informative reading – “showed minimal associations with text comprehension. One might have expected that reading for informational purposes (i.e., visiting Wikipedia or other educational websites; reading news, or reading e-books) would be much more positively related to comprehension, but this is not the case.” In short, the researchers concluded that in primary and secondary school reading should be encouraged, especially in printed format.
