Inside View from Ireland: Third Generation Attention Span

I HAVE AN OBLIGATION to ensure college students read books and that they immerse in the experience. I still believe real immersion happens with paper-based books (first generation textbooks). Even though I really enjoy the convenience and the practicality of a 3G wireless Sony eReader, there's something mentally immersive about holding a perfect bound spline and turning a paper page. And I'm not alone in my belief.

The New York Times wonders if E-Books are inherently less pleasing for the brain that ink on a page. In an editorial, they canvassed a diverse group of experts, most of whom focus on the nature of attention during the reading process. As might be expected, the experts believe old-fashioned printed books foster a distraction-free immersive environment.

In Tipperary Institute, we need to ensure our graduates have attention spans long enough to pore over hundreds of pages of technical documentation. Sometimes that means challenging young minds with tomes. It means pointing to the discipline required to carve out quiet spaces in order to have the environment required to read a really long book. In today's world, where the banality of chat shows and twitter streams are seen as essential social currency, focused attention is a scarce resource.

Jonah Lehrer points out that reading an e-book isn't going to reduce the human cortex to jelly. "I don't worry too much about the effect of E-Books on the reading brain," he says, pointing out the two distinct pathways in the brain that are activated by the sight of letters. He cites Stanislas Dehaene's conclusions, when people are reading "routinized, familiar passages" a part of the brain known as the visual word form area (VWFA, or the ventral pathway) is activated. This pathway processes letters and words in parallel, allowing us to read quickly and effortlessly. It's the pathway that literate readers almost always rely upon."

In college courses that I teach, I know it's important to play with words by offering alternative definitions to new vocabulary. Dehaene and colleagues point out that we use a second reading pathway in the brain, activated when we read prose that is "unfamiliar". When we encounter unfamiliar text, we use a completely different neural route, known as the dorsal reading pathway. Even my most well-read students use this dorsal reading pathway--the same patterns of brain activity as a senior infant, carefully sounding out the syllables.

Lehrer relates this scientific finding to e-books. "This research suggests that the act of reading observes a gradient of fluency. Familiar sentences printed in Helvetica activate the ventral route, while difficult prose filled with jargon and fancy words and printed in an illegible font require us to use the slow dorsal route."

When you read lines of text on a Sony e-reader, you're probably retraining your brain through its dorsal pathway because your visual cortex has to adjust to the image on the e-reader. Your brain has previously evolved to read written words on a printed page, just as mine adjusted to reading lines of text on teletype machines while working in an airlift dispatch centre. Our brains adjust to new reading formats until we can read with the same ventral fluency as words on a page.

So when you pick up a Kindle or when you tap your way through a book on an iPhone, the process probably doesn't feel as effortless as flicking through a paperback. Jonah Lehrer says not to worry. "Give it a little time and practice" and your brain will make reading on screen just about automatic. "Before long, digital ink will feel just as easy as actual ink."

Jonah Lehrer -- "Reading, e-books and the brain" in Science Blogs, 16 Oct 09.

New York Times Editorial -- "Does the brain like e-books", New York Times (NYT), 14 Oct 09.

Mokoto Rich -- "Curling up with hybrid books, videos included", NYT, 30 Sep 09.

Maryanne Wolf -- Proust and the Squid ISBN 978-0060933845