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You are here: Home / 5 - Industries / Publishing / Physical Books May Offer Better Reading Comprehension than Ebooks

Physical Books May Offer Better Reading Comprehension than Ebooks

November 7, 2013 by Matt Perman

This has been my experience, and it’s good to hear that science may be bearing this out. Here’s a key quote from a brief article on this subject:

“Some scientists believe that our brain actually interprets written letters and words as physical objects—a reflection of the fact that our minds evolved to perceive things, not symbols,” writes Carr. “The physical presence of the printed pages, and the ability to flip back and forth through them, turns out to be important to the mind’s ability to navigate written works, particularly lengthy and complicated ones. We quickly develop a mental map of the contents of a printed text, as if its argument or story were a voyage unfolding through space. If you’ve ever picked up a book that you read long ago and discovered that your hands were able to locate a particular passage quickly, you’ve experienced this phenomenon.”

The question for me is whether there’s a way to be able to replicate this phenomena with e-books. I haven’t found one yet, but perhaps there is.

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Filed Under: Publishing, Reading

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Matt Perman started What’s Best Next in 2008 as a blog on God-centered productivity. It has now become an organization dedicated to helping you do work that matters.

Matt is the author of What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done and a frequent speaker on leadership and productivity from a gospel-driven perspective. He has led the website teams at Desiring God and Made to Flourish, and is now director of career development at The King’s College NYC. He lives in Manhattan.

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