In response to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, our country and others worldwide shifted online in order to make a compromise between minimal contact and continued education. With this shift online along with the continuous evolution in technology, the consumption of digital media increased. According to Forbes, broadband providers reported traffic surges between 30%-50% within the first month of quarantine, with total internet usage estimated to have increased by 50%-70%. Much of this is accounted for by the massive migration to online educational platforms. As the future generations’ educations are being impacted, it is essential to further understand how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted their education beyond this displacement.
With moving online, the majority of resources available to students are in a digital format. Digital formatting can sometimes make learning more hard, especially when students are already digital for the majority of their class time. According to Lauren Singer Trakhman who studies reading comprehension at the University of Maryland, College Park, it’s easier to miss details when reading screens. For screen usage, she offers that perhaps the light causes more visual strain and thus mental fatigue. Anne Mangen, a literacy professor at the University of Stavanger in Norway, presented that even the physical act of turning a page improves comprehension in comparison to scrolling or clicking a button because of the sensorimotor cues formed. While we read, our brains form a cognitive map of the text that allows us to better comprehend and recall what we’ve read. For digital formatting, the ability to move pages has a large impact on why our comprehension is lessened. In their article “Cognitive Map or Medium Materiality? Reading On Paper and Screen,” Jinghui Hou, et al. (2017) hypothesized and found support that, as long as reading format facilitates the ability to construct a cognitive map, our overall comprehension doesn’t decrease. For a cognitive map, it allows us to better comprehend and recall what we’ve read because of the ability to remember what happened on each section of a page. For digital formatting, the movement of pages doesn’t allow this as well as physical text does. Digital formatting doesn’t feature fixed locations and thus doesn’t allow readers to form a permanent or adequate cognitive map of the text, lowering their overall comprehension. This is inherently detrimental to students and hurts their ability to learn, leading students more susceptible to failure during an already difficult pandemic.
To further understand visual comprehension in a digital form, it might be important to understand visual short term memory better. In their article "Does Visual Short-Term Memory Have A High-Capacity Stage," Michi Matsukura and Andrew Hollingworth explored recent work by Sligte et al. that offered the hypothesis that "relatively early after the removal of a memory array, a cue allowed participants to access a fragile, high-capacity stage of VSTM [visual short term memory] that is distinct from iconic memory." Matsukura and Hollingworth provided further support of the hypothesis that, in comparison to the experiment done by Sligte et al. in which the estimated storage capacity was 16 items, the storage capacity of the VSTM is actually much smaller, supporting the standard limited capacity view of VSTM. They found that "overall accuracy was higher for color discrimination than for orientation discrimination." Along with previous findings for digital reading that formatting impacts comprehension due to its hindrance on forming a cognitive map, Matsukura and Hollingworth’s research found that orientation has an impact on the amount of items correctly stored in the VSTM.
Given the inadequate processing associated with reading in a digital format, it’s necessary to consider what possible neuroanatomical aspects lead to lower comprehension levels. Given Hou’s, Singer Trakhman’s, and Mangen’s research, it’s possible that digital formatting, lack of cues, and strain might all contribute to lower comprehension. Given Matsukura’s and Hollingworth’s research, formatting and orientation overall impacts VSTM. This would support the idea that formatting impacts comprehension in some way. Perhaps strain or lack of an adequate cognitive map contributes to a weakened ability of storing items in the visual short term memory at that given time, something that then wouldn’t be as present during reading in a more physical format. Perhaps an inadequate cognitive map requires more working memory and thus less literature details can be stored. Further research to determine what the correct reasoning behind lack of comprehension with digital media is needed, but the idea that orientation and formatting might be essential is important. For schools and businesses alike, the resources given should be rethought to better fit current scientific research, especially in a time where the majority of what we receive is digitally formatted.
References:
Beech, M. (2020, March 25). COVID-19 Pushes Up Internet Use 70% And Streaming More Than 12%, First Figures Reveal. Forbes. COVID-19 Pushes Up Internet Use 70% And Streaming More Than 12%, First Figures Reveal (forbes.com)
Benson, K. (2020, July 28). Reading on Paper VS Screens: What’s the Difference? BrainFacts. Reading on Paper Versus Screens: What’s the Difference? (brainfacts.org)
Hou, J. et. al (2017). Cognitive map or medium materiality? Reading on paper and screen. Computers in Human Behavior, 67: 84-94.
Matsukura, M., Hollingworth, A. (2011). Does visual short-term Memory have a high-capacity stage? Psychon Bull Rev (2011) 18:1098–1104
Sligte, I. G., Scholte, H. S., & Lamme, V. A. F. (2008). Are there multiple visual short-term memory stores? PloS One, 3,e1699
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