Count me among those who find these conclusions dubious, especially as it relates to ebooks read on a kindle. I read both the absolute same way. In fact I am now on my fourth Kindle, not counting phone and computer apps. But I agree that there is more (how much more, unsure) skimming mostly because of social media. Social media mostly reminds me of talk shows: A whole lot of people pooling their ignorance. Give me someone who has studied the situation in a discussion with someone else who has also studied and I will learn many times as much. --- When there is mostly garbage, who doesn't skim?
Reading Habits -- Skimming the New Normal?
- Thread starter Extollager
- Start date
psikeyhackr
Physics is Phutile, Fiziks is Fundamental
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Actually I started an SF story about this subject but a conclusion never came into focus:
The iTod Singularity - Wattpad
The iTod Singularity - Wattpad
dwndrgn
Fierce Vowelless One
This article is not convincing me of anything. To begin with, I'm not convinced that
"As UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age. "
empathy is a time-demanding deep reading process. I can see how someone who skims a text would be less able to complete a critical analysis but I'm not sure where empathy comes into it.
Additionally, the research that was mentioned later where two groups of students were both given the same story to read, one in digital form and one in paper form, seems flawed as well. Stories affect people differently and the best way to complete a study like that one is to have TWO different stories read by the same two groups but switched, in other words, one group reads one story in digital and the other story in paper and see where your information leads. I really dislike the way people tend to extrapolate from minimal information.
And then the article goes on to say that
"In other words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own." Which just seems specious to me. People can see beauty in a second - they don't need loads of time to know something is beautiful. Sure, you can appreciate the details of that beauty after some time studying it, but you know it is beautiful the instant you see (or hear/feel...) it.
This quote seems to be from someone who has never used an ereader which all have ways to go back and forth to find something - even a word search if you can't find what you are looking for.
"Karin Littau and Andrew Piper have noted another dimension: physicality. Piper, Littau and Anne Mangen’s group emphasize that the sense of touch in print reading adds an important redundancy to information – a kind of “geometry” to words, and a spatial “thereness” for text. As Piper notes, human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination – what he calls the “technology of recurrence”. The importance of recurrence for both young and older readers involves the ability to go back, to check and evaluate one’s understanding of a text. The question, then, is what happens to comprehension when our youth skim on a screen whose lack of spatial thereness discourages “looking back.” "
I think the article is conflating reading things on the internet with reading actual books. I can mostly agree with what they are saying (maybe not the empathy or beauty bits) if they are only discussing how people read news and other SM stuff online. But if they are saying that John Doe buys X book and then instead of reading it, skims it. I don't think they have a case. However, I do know that people don't take the time to read past the headlines or follow through to see if what they are reading is actually true (consider Facebook memes - the ones that aren't about cats are pretty much full of misleading information but they get passed around like they are proven facts).
I never skim. What would be the point? Back in high school, when reading certain books was part of the curriculum and I didn't want to read them I just didn't read them. I didn't skim then either. Seems pointless to me. I dunno. All their talk of empathy and beauty got me cornfuzzled.
"As UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes, like inference, critical analysis and empathy, all of which are indispensable to learning at any age. "
empathy is a time-demanding deep reading process. I can see how someone who skims a text would be less able to complete a critical analysis but I'm not sure where empathy comes into it.
Additionally, the research that was mentioned later where two groups of students were both given the same story to read, one in digital form and one in paper form, seems flawed as well. Stories affect people differently and the best way to complete a study like that one is to have TWO different stories read by the same two groups but switched, in other words, one group reads one story in digital and the other story in paper and see where your information leads. I really dislike the way people tend to extrapolate from minimal information.
And then the article goes on to say that
"In other words, we don’t have time to grasp complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own." Which just seems specious to me. People can see beauty in a second - they don't need loads of time to know something is beautiful. Sure, you can appreciate the details of that beauty after some time studying it, but you know it is beautiful the instant you see (or hear/feel...) it.
This quote seems to be from someone who has never used an ereader which all have ways to go back and forth to find something - even a word search if you can't find what you are looking for.
"Karin Littau and Andrew Piper have noted another dimension: physicality. Piper, Littau and Anne Mangen’s group emphasize that the sense of touch in print reading adds an important redundancy to information – a kind of “geometry” to words, and a spatial “thereness” for text. As Piper notes, human beings need a knowledge of where they are in time and space that allows them to return to things and learn from re-examination – what he calls the “technology of recurrence”. The importance of recurrence for both young and older readers involves the ability to go back, to check and evaluate one’s understanding of a text. The question, then, is what happens to comprehension when our youth skim on a screen whose lack of spatial thereness discourages “looking back.” "
I think the article is conflating reading things on the internet with reading actual books. I can mostly agree with what they are saying (maybe not the empathy or beauty bits) if they are only discussing how people read news and other SM stuff online. But if they are saying that John Doe buys X book and then instead of reading it, skims it. I don't think they have a case. However, I do know that people don't take the time to read past the headlines or follow through to see if what they are reading is actually true (consider Facebook memes - the ones that aren't about cats are pretty much full of misleading information but they get passed around like they are proven facts).
I never skim. What would be the point? Back in high school, when reading certain books was part of the curriculum and I didn't want to read them I just didn't read them. I didn't skim then either. Seems pointless to me. I dunno. All their talk of empathy and beauty got me cornfuzzled.
AlexH
Well-Known Member
I've wondered why I seem to spot more typos and other errors than most people I know. Maybe it's because I'm a much slower reader than them! I also dislike names or words I can't pronounce. They don't stick in my head and I trip over them more than the first time.
Anthoney
Bearded Member
I read gigantic series because I like to immerse myself for days or weeks at a time. Skimming would be counter productive to the experience I'm seeking. Then again I could never understand people who used cliff-notes instead of reading the book.
I could have written both of those posts myself!!
With the addition that I love long, Peter Hamilton style, books for exactly that reason! Although I admittedly like to read series spread out over a long period of time (multiple years typically) with many series and other novels in between each instalment.
psikeyhackr
Physics is Phutile, Fiziks is Fundamental
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I have read all of the Vorkosigan series and most of the Honor Harrington series and lots Keith Laumer's Bolo stuff and his imitators.
Sometimes I skimmed David Weber's politico-economic tirades.
I'm sorry!
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I skim when using my kindle. It shows me 1 or 2 paragraphs which I can preread at a glance. If it is a story composed of multiple stories (and I write like that) and I am looking at one of the stories I am not following, I skip it. You press your thumb down on the screen and there is the next bite size chunk of text to preread, repeat as needed. If I am following the real plot of the defunct engineer racing against time to defuse the crisis I don't need to know what his family life was like 10 years ago.
Sometimes people alternate the present time story with an historical accounting of the traditional fashions that created that way of life. If I'm not interested in the historical traditions I skip it. If the battle gets too bloody or too long and drawn out I skip it. Because you can clearly see what you are skipping you are not wasting your time reading the story, you are reading what is important to you about the story. I'm sorry if all the research the author did is unread. I'm not going to read it just because it is there.
I read books and screens but not much in the line of magazines anymore. No online magazines though I would like to find some nice science fiction magazines on line. That's the trouble, one can't buy used magazines anymore. I prefer real books but I look through the web for the best deal on used books (how ironic I'd like to be an author for a living). The charity places that sell a book for penny and $4 shipping are great unless you are trying to sell your used books. The E-book reader is fantastic for Indie works because a lot of the time there is only an ebook to get. I published only E-Books at first, was told that was the green way to do things. I didn't try to make a paperback cause I thought it was too hard to do. I get the free stuff knowing I probably won't get the rest of the set, unless it comes along at a reduced offer. Which does happen. I'm not paying over $3 for an E-book, just don't have money. In earlier times when money was made to spend I would buy 2 or 3 books at a time at bookstores that sadly no longer exist. I had no idea Star Trek books were so vastly produced until Barnes and Noble arrived and there was a whole long shelf of nothing but Star Trek books.
I read the web like it is a newspaper, sometimes skim, but not if I am interested in the article and especially if I am clueless. It is the best place to get all the viewpoints on any one thing. I had to get the paperless local paper, one fourth the cost. Even looking at each page on the big screen monitor I know I miss stuff that I never would with the real paper paper. Some kind of phenomena about reading off a computer screen. I call it horizontal blindness, where your eyes skip right over a word, a phrase, even an entire line. Like it was never there.
Does the way you read affect the brain? Of course it does. A couple of years ago I was told no eye glass prescription was going to make it any easier for me to read. After 20 years of working screens, starting out with the George Jetson green consoles with the green screens with the green text graduating up to the entire desktop filled with huge to little screens, my eyes kept narrowing the focus point which was approaching my nose. Once I got out of there and started reading all different size fonts from books I can't change to text on screens with nasty backgrounds to when I write and crank the magnification up to the moon I have found that my ease and ability to read has greatly improved. I'm guessing by forcing the eyes to focus under all sorts of conditions I broke the stagnation of the eyeballs, allowing them to freely orgasm while absorbing text, instead of using the clockwork orange technique of eye muscles rigidly frozen in place. That's only a physical change.
The readers are multi-purposed, and for many people they only have one use. The pesky phones are hand held communicators with builtin computers. Because they don't (but could easily) come with a mouse, keyboard, screen, and printer, the only ones really using it as a computer are the companies feeding the phone as they monitor everything everyone does on the phone. I have no idea how people read on them but they do. There's my line in the sand. They watch TV on them as well. It all looks like a slinky toy expanding and contracting (which in itself is something to watch) from little screen phones that kept upsizing to tablet size than back down again to the tablets approaching the console screen sizes of the 1970's then back down again to the huge screens that fill a wall, and show no sign of receding. Someday the computerized phone will be harnessed by the user, but it might be implanted in one's neck by then, builtin tags like the implants our pets have.
Sometimes people alternate the present time story with an historical accounting of the traditional fashions that created that way of life. If I'm not interested in the historical traditions I skip it. If the battle gets too bloody or too long and drawn out I skip it. Because you can clearly see what you are skipping you are not wasting your time reading the story, you are reading what is important to you about the story. I'm sorry if all the research the author did is unread. I'm not going to read it just because it is there.
I read books and screens but not much in the line of magazines anymore. No online magazines though I would like to find some nice science fiction magazines on line. That's the trouble, one can't buy used magazines anymore. I prefer real books but I look through the web for the best deal on used books (how ironic I'd like to be an author for a living). The charity places that sell a book for penny and $4 shipping are great unless you are trying to sell your used books. The E-book reader is fantastic for Indie works because a lot of the time there is only an ebook to get. I published only E-Books at first, was told that was the green way to do things. I didn't try to make a paperback cause I thought it was too hard to do. I get the free stuff knowing I probably won't get the rest of the set, unless it comes along at a reduced offer. Which does happen. I'm not paying over $3 for an E-book, just don't have money. In earlier times when money was made to spend I would buy 2 or 3 books at a time at bookstores that sadly no longer exist. I had no idea Star Trek books were so vastly produced until Barnes and Noble arrived and there was a whole long shelf of nothing but Star Trek books.
I read the web like it is a newspaper, sometimes skim, but not if I am interested in the article and especially if I am clueless. It is the best place to get all the viewpoints on any one thing. I had to get the paperless local paper, one fourth the cost. Even looking at each page on the big screen monitor I know I miss stuff that I never would with the real paper paper. Some kind of phenomena about reading off a computer screen. I call it horizontal blindness, where your eyes skip right over a word, a phrase, even an entire line. Like it was never there.
Does the way you read affect the brain? Of course it does. A couple of years ago I was told no eye glass prescription was going to make it any easier for me to read. After 20 years of working screens, starting out with the George Jetson green consoles with the green screens with the green text graduating up to the entire desktop filled with huge to little screens, my eyes kept narrowing the focus point which was approaching my nose. Once I got out of there and started reading all different size fonts from books I can't change to text on screens with nasty backgrounds to when I write and crank the magnification up to the moon I have found that my ease and ability to read has greatly improved. I'm guessing by forcing the eyes to focus under all sorts of conditions I broke the stagnation of the eyeballs, allowing them to freely orgasm while absorbing text, instead of using the clockwork orange technique of eye muscles rigidly frozen in place. That's only a physical change.
The readers are multi-purposed, and for many people they only have one use. The pesky phones are hand held communicators with builtin computers. Because they don't (but could easily) come with a mouse, keyboard, screen, and printer, the only ones really using it as a computer are the companies feeding the phone as they monitor everything everyone does on the phone. I have no idea how people read on them but they do. There's my line in the sand. They watch TV on them as well. It all looks like a slinky toy expanding and contracting (which in itself is something to watch) from little screen phones that kept upsizing to tablet size than back down again to the tablets approaching the console screen sizes of the 1970's then back down again to the huge screens that fill a wall, and show no sign of receding. Someday the computerized phone will be harnessed by the user, but it might be implanted in one's neck by then, builtin tags like the implants our pets have.
@Robert Zwilling ; You and others mention folks reading on their I-phones (which makes no sense to me sitting 2-feet from a 40" monitor), which reminds me of just a couple days ago. To make a long story short, after a number of conversations regarding a 211,000 word novel of mine, I was at a loss why it was taking this guy so long. More so, he kept nudging me to get it into print ASAP.
Turns out, he's been reading it on his I-phone. Personally, I'd not even try that. However, a surprising number of folks I've learned have ditched their PC's, notebooks, tablets and so on, and are doing exactly that.
K2
Turns out, he's been reading it on his I-phone. Personally, I'd not even try that. However, a surprising number of folks I've learned have ditched their PC's, notebooks, tablets and so on, and are doing exactly that.
K2
psikeyhackr
Physics is Phutile, Fiziks is Fundamental
- Joined
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- Messages
- 2,180
Yeah, iPhones are ridiculous! I use the Kindle app on my Samsung Note 5 Android phone. I can lie on my back on the couch, or stomach on my bed with my head on the pillow. It is better than a book in some ways since I don't have to hold it open or worry about bending pages. I do like keeping books in good shape when I get them.
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