The pages of a book, or the shining of a screen

a literature review on the effects of the reading medium on text comprehension

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2025.1.47988

Keywords:

digital reading, paper reading, reading comprehension, reading development

Abstract

In a completely digital era, with the presence of technological resources in most of our daily activities, it is relevant to understand how reading development has occurred. Many of these technological activities are based on written texts and therefore involve reading processes. Given so many changes, there is a question as to whether the development of reading and the way we read have been different. This paper seeks to conduct a bibliographic review of papers that have investigated the effects of two media on text comprehension: reading in print media and reading in digital media. We researched papers from 2017 to 2025 that sought to understand the main differences found in text comprehension between the two media. The results showed an advantage of reading through print media compared to digital media, and that frequent exposure to digital devices can compromise reading and comprehension in various ways.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Bárbara Cardoso de Souza, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

Bárbara is an English teacher and holds a Master's degree in Letters, specializing in Psycholinguistics, from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. Her Master's research aims to understand the effects of comprehension on reading in print, digital media, and through the TikTok platform. She is a member of the ProLinGue research group (Bilingual Language Processing Laboratory), coordinated by Professor Ana Beatriz Areas da Luz Fontes.

Ana Beatriz Areas da Luz Fontes, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil.

She holds a degree in Journalism from The University of Texas at El Paso – UTEP (2005) and a master's and doctorate in Social, Cognitive and Neuroscience Psychology, also from UTEP (2008, 2010). She has research experience in the area of ​​Cognitive Psychology, with an emphasis on Psycholinguistics and Bilingualism. She taught in the Department of Psychology at Penn State University, Beaver campus, from 2012 to 2014. Currently, she is a professor at the Institute of Letters and a permanent member of the Postgraduate Program in Letters, both at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul. She has been a member of LABICO – the Laboratory of Bilingualism and Cognition at UFRGS since 2014 and has coordinated the ProLinGue research group – Bilingual Language Processing since 2018.

References

ACKERMAN, R.; GOLDSMITH, M. Metacognitive regulation of text learning: on screen versus on paper. Journal of Experimental Psychology Applied, Washington, v. 17, n. 1, p. 18-32, March 2011.

ANNISETTE, L. E.; LAFRENIERE, K. D. Social media, texting, and personality: A test of the shallowing hypothesis. Personality and Individual Differences, [s. l.], v. 115, p. 154-158, 2017.

BRESÓ-GRANCHA, N.; JORQUES-INFANTE, M. J.; MORET-TATAY, C. Reading digital-versus print-easy texts: a study with university students who prefer digital sources. Psicologia: Reflexão e Crítica, [s. l.], v. 35, p. 10, 2022.

CLINTON, V. Reading from paper compared to screens: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Research in Reading, [s. l.], 2019.

DEHAENE, S. Os neurônios da leitura: como a ciência explica a nossa capacidade de ler. Porto Alegre: Penso, 2012.

DELGADO, P.; SALMERÓN, L. The inattentive on-screen reading: Reading medium affects attention and reading comprehension under time pressure. Learning and Instruction, [s. l.], v. 71, p. 101396, 2021.

FURENES, M. I.; KUCIRKOVA, N.; BUS, A. G. A comparison of children’s reading on paper versus screen: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, [s. l.], v. 91, n. 4, p. 483-517, 2021.

JENSEN, R. E.; ROE, A.; BLIKSTAD-BALAS, M. The smell of paper or the shine of a screen? Students’ reading comprehension, text processing, and attitudes when reading on paper and screen. Computers & Education, [s. l.], v. 219, p. 105107, 2024.

JIAN, Y. C. Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive strategies: evidence from eye movements during science-text reading. Reading and Writing, [s. l.], v. 35, n. 7, 2022.

KONG, Y.; SEO, Y. S.; ZHAI, L. Comparison of reading performance on screen and on paper: A meta-analysis. Computers & Education, [s. l.], v. 123, p. 138-149, 2018.

LAUTERMAN, T.; ACKERMAN, R. Overcoming screen inferiority in learning and calibration. Computers in Human Behavior, [s. l.], n. 35, p. 455-463, 2014.

LI, Y.; YAN, L. Which reading comprehension is better? A meta-analysis of the effect of paper versus digital reading in recent 20 years. Telematics and Informatics Reports, [s. l.], v. 14, p. 100142, 2024.

LIM, J.; WHITEHEAD, G. E.; CHOI, Y. Interactive e-book reading vs. paper-based reading: Comparing the effects of different mediums on middle school students’ reading comprehension. System, [s. l.], 2021.

REIBER-KUIJPERS, M.; KRAL, M.; MEIJER, P. Digital reading in a second or foreign language: A systematic literature review. Computers & Education, [s. l.], 2021.

SINGER, L. M.; ALEXANDER, P. A. Reading across mediums: Effects of reading digital and print texts on comprehension and calibration. The Journal of Experimental Education, [s. l.], p. 155-172, 2017.

WOLF, Maryanne. O cérebro no mundo digital: os desafios da leitura na nossa era. São Paulo: Contexto, 2019.

Downloads

Published

2025-12-19

How to Cite

Cardoso de Souza, B., & Areas da Luz Fontes, A. B. (2025). The pages of a book, or the shining of a screen: a literature review on the effects of the reading medium on text comprehension. Letrônica, 18(1), e47988. https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-4301.2025.1.47988

Issue

Vol. 18 No. 1 (2025): Single Volume - Continuous flow

Section

THE DEVELOPMENT OF (A)TYPICAL READING AND WRITING IN MONOLINGUISTIC AND BILINGUAL PEOPLE IN THE LIGHT OF PSYCHOLINGUISTICS

License

Copyright (c) 2025 Bárbara Cardoso de Souza, Ana Beatriz Areas da Luz Fontes

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.