A big issue in literacy instruction is the ‘Matthew Effect’- the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The more you read, the less effort is required, thus making you more likely to enjoy reading. If the child has been exposed to a systematic method of teaching reading, they should have (ideally) learned all syllable types and common vowel patterns by the end of 2nd grade. So then it is a matter of repeated practice. As the child builds vocabulary and schema by reading certain topics, they can then apply them to the next time they encounter that topic. They see the same letter patterns combined in different ways and continue to build fluency. And on and on it goes :)
If you can develop a love of reading young, they will be life long readers. if you can read you can learn anything. it's such a foundational thing. Glad people like you are working out there to help our children read!
This is a great question! I'm planning to do a deep dive on this in a future post. Briefly, we know that when kids are reading from screens vs print, they score lower on reading comprehension tests on screens. The screen tests are set up to be identical to the books (font size, shape, etc). Interestingly, kids don't self-report a difference meaning they think they read just as well but quantitatively they do not. Moreover, there is a recent study (linked below) that shows this disproportionately affects girls.
All of that said, I haven't found a study that looked at black & white readers in children. I've found a few with mixed results (some positive some negative) on adults. If I had to guess, I would guess a smaller effect than typical screens. However, we still don't fully understand why screens lead to these issues. For example, we know that different parts of the brain light up when you are looking at different patterns. Some patterns excite the "upper" parts of the brain (cerebral cortex) whereas other patterns excite the "lower" parts of the brain. It is possible when looking at digitized images on an e-reader you are similarly activating different parts of the brain. There is certainly a mechanism there.
Still, we don't know if 1) this can be trained out - if you practice only on e-readers can you learn to compensate? and 2) is the subtle difference in black & white e-readers really big enough to matter in terms of comprehension?
Either way, THANK YOU SO MUCH for this fun question and conversation! Look forward to chatting more!!
Great question, especially bc the display is meant to read like paper, I wonder if it has an impact on comprehension. One of the popular children’s ebook platforms- Epic! Is pretty interactive with the level of illustration and page flipping. Much different than a kindle reading experience.
Laura, Thanks for the comment! I answered Mike above but would be interested in your thoughts if you are using Epic as a reading interventionist! I think it's interesting that kids don't report a difference in their ability to read when using screens but when we study it, we see comprehension differences. I would think that e-readers that are paper-like would be an appropriate substitute. But it doesn't appear to be well evaluated.
My district has a program similar to Epic, and in my current setting I don’t use it. When I taught middle school, for a few reasons, my classes had more than one group. Kids that weren’t with me frequently read on the app. I saw it as exposure to language, an opportunity to hear fluent reading and hopefully build some vocabulary. Any time I tried a comprehension task attached to it, they were not successful.
So I'm no child psychologist, I don't know any of the literature, and I'm not a child anymore, so take the following as strictly anecdotal. I do, however, find it interesting all the same.
Up until about 6 months after getting married, the majority of the reading I did for my own enjoyment was with a physical book. Then, once, when I was doing laundry at a laundromat, I decided to download Kindle onto my phone (not a black and white reader) and buy a book by Wendell Berry that was recommended to me by a friend. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but I noticed that once I had finished the book, I had a harder time recalling content to my wife with whom I was sharing my experience reading this book.
I've given a lot of thought to this. One of the things I noticed was that I couldn't remember where in the book I had read an idea, as in I couldn't picture where the content was physically at in the book, because there was no physical book. I can remember things that I liked from "The Giver", I remember roughly where certain passages are physically at in "The Hatchet". I know roughly where to go when I pick up "Bringing It To The Table" by Wendell Berry to find something he has said in the book.
So here is my thought. We are physical beings living in a physical world, and while we may interact with a digital world regularly, our brains don't know how to deal with non-physical information as adeptly as when we receive information from physical sources.
TL;DR - My brain doesn't hold onto digital information nearly as readily as information shared with me through physical means.
So perhaps there is something to this, or not, but it is my experience, and I've heard others echo similar sentiments.
Wow! What an interesting observation. I agree completely that digital is so new and we didn't evolve to be able to interact with and manage digital all the time with learning. I wonder a lot about the long-term ramifications. There are lots of new studies that show that it dramatically influences kid's brains - neural connections, reward structures, and hormone release are all affected. Thank you so much for sharing and btw, I'm super excited to read more about your journey! We often think about finding a co-op with land - we are already in the desert! ;)
Very interesting! I definitely prefer to read an actual book, but have not noticed a difference in comprehension reading in the kindle app. Totally agree with the lost physicality. In schools we are seeing much more widespread issues with pencil grip, writing stamina, and using scissors because kids don’t use them nearly as much as they did before screens.
I would also say I don't *think* I have a difference in reading comprehension but I just saw a study that showed that kids also don't *think* they have a difference in comp but when quantitatively evaluated they do?? So I'd be interested to know what is true for adults? VERY interesting indeed! My oldest doesn't like online at all so we've gone very old school with her education. And completely agree about the physicality of writing - I notice that in myself because I type most of the time too.
A big issue in literacy instruction is the ‘Matthew Effect’- the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The more you read, the less effort is required, thus making you more likely to enjoy reading. If the child has been exposed to a systematic method of teaching reading, they should have (ideally) learned all syllable types and common vowel patterns by the end of 2nd grade. So then it is a matter of repeated practice. As the child builds vocabulary and schema by reading certain topics, they can then apply them to the next time they encounter that topic. They see the same letter patterns combined in different ways and continue to build fluency. And on and on it goes :)
If you can develop a love of reading young, they will be life long readers. if you can read you can learn anything. it's such a foundational thing. Glad people like you are working out there to help our children read!
Absolutely! Literacy and language between 0-3 is so important, and gets so little attention.
Where does a black and white kindle reader fit in to these findings?
This is a great question! I'm planning to do a deep dive on this in a future post. Briefly, we know that when kids are reading from screens vs print, they score lower on reading comprehension tests on screens. The screen tests are set up to be identical to the books (font size, shape, etc). Interestingly, kids don't self-report a difference meaning they think they read just as well but quantitatively they do not. Moreover, there is a recent study (linked below) that shows this disproportionately affects girls.
All of that said, I haven't found a study that looked at black & white readers in children. I've found a few with mixed results (some positive some negative) on adults. If I had to guess, I would guess a smaller effect than typical screens. However, we still don't fully understand why screens lead to these issues. For example, we know that different parts of the brain light up when you are looking at different patterns. Some patterns excite the "upper" parts of the brain (cerebral cortex) whereas other patterns excite the "lower" parts of the brain. It is possible when looking at digitized images on an e-reader you are similarly activating different parts of the brain. There is certainly a mechanism there.
Still, we don't know if 1) this can be trained out - if you practice only on e-readers can you learn to compensate? and 2) is the subtle difference in black & white e-readers really big enough to matter in terms of comprehension?
Either way, THANK YOU SO MUCH for this fun question and conversation! Look forward to chatting more!!
Great question, especially bc the display is meant to read like paper, I wonder if it has an impact on comprehension. One of the popular children’s ebook platforms- Epic! Is pretty interactive with the level of illustration and page flipping. Much different than a kindle reading experience.
Laura, Thanks for the comment! I answered Mike above but would be interested in your thoughts if you are using Epic as a reading interventionist! I think it's interesting that kids don't report a difference in their ability to read when using screens but when we study it, we see comprehension differences. I would think that e-readers that are paper-like would be an appropriate substitute. But it doesn't appear to be well evaluated.
My district has a program similar to Epic, and in my current setting I don’t use it. When I taught middle school, for a few reasons, my classes had more than one group. Kids that weren’t with me frequently read on the app. I saw it as exposure to language, an opportunity to hear fluent reading and hopefully build some vocabulary. Any time I tried a comprehension task attached to it, they were not successful.
Very interesting to hear your perspective as someone that has used it and experienced it first hand! Thank you for sharing!!
So I'm no child psychologist, I don't know any of the literature, and I'm not a child anymore, so take the following as strictly anecdotal. I do, however, find it interesting all the same.
Up until about 6 months after getting married, the majority of the reading I did for my own enjoyment was with a physical book. Then, once, when I was doing laundry at a laundromat, I decided to download Kindle onto my phone (not a black and white reader) and buy a book by Wendell Berry that was recommended to me by a friend. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but I noticed that once I had finished the book, I had a harder time recalling content to my wife with whom I was sharing my experience reading this book.
I've given a lot of thought to this. One of the things I noticed was that I couldn't remember where in the book I had read an idea, as in I couldn't picture where the content was physically at in the book, because there was no physical book. I can remember things that I liked from "The Giver", I remember roughly where certain passages are physically at in "The Hatchet". I know roughly where to go when I pick up "Bringing It To The Table" by Wendell Berry to find something he has said in the book.
So here is my thought. We are physical beings living in a physical world, and while we may interact with a digital world regularly, our brains don't know how to deal with non-physical information as adeptly as when we receive information from physical sources.
TL;DR - My brain doesn't hold onto digital information nearly as readily as information shared with me through physical means.
So perhaps there is something to this, or not, but it is my experience, and I've heard others echo similar sentiments.
Wow! What an interesting observation. I agree completely that digital is so new and we didn't evolve to be able to interact with and manage digital all the time with learning. I wonder a lot about the long-term ramifications. There are lots of new studies that show that it dramatically influences kid's brains - neural connections, reward structures, and hormone release are all affected. Thank you so much for sharing and btw, I'm super excited to read more about your journey! We often think about finding a co-op with land - we are already in the desert! ;)
Very interesting! I definitely prefer to read an actual book, but have not noticed a difference in comprehension reading in the kindle app. Totally agree with the lost physicality. In schools we are seeing much more widespread issues with pencil grip, writing stamina, and using scissors because kids don’t use them nearly as much as they did before screens.
I would also say I don't *think* I have a difference in reading comprehension but I just saw a study that showed that kids also don't *think* they have a difference in comp but when quantitatively evaluated they do?? So I'd be interested to know what is true for adults? VERY interesting indeed! My oldest doesn't like online at all so we've gone very old school with her education. And completely agree about the physicality of writing - I notice that in myself because I type most of the time too.