Study settles debate over best way to read
New York Post • • health
Key Points:
- A study by the University of Tokyo found that reading printed manga allows the brain to process and connect story details more efficiently than reading on digital tablets, due to tactile and spatial cues from physical pages.
- Using fMRI scans, researchers observed that paper readers showed lower brain activity in language and narrative integration areas, indicating more efficient mental processing compared to tablet readers who required more cognitive effort.
- Participants who read digitally took longer to answer complex questions requiring integration of story parts, suggesting that paper readers developed a stronger mental "story schema."
- The study used manga to leverage its visual storytelling, but researchers believe similar results would apply to novels and other conventional texts due to shared narrative structures.
- This research aligns with previous findings, such as a 2019 Pediatrics study, which showed that printed books foster better parent-child bonding than e-readers during shared reading.
