permanent note
Summary
- Multiple studies show that reading is more effective than listening in inforamation retention.
Details
- In one study, when quizzed 2 days later, the hearers remembered 59%, but the readers retained 81%
- Same applied regardless of language.
References
Quotes
A fascinating demonstration comes from an experiment where students
were given just over 20 minutes to go through a science article. Half were randomly assigned to read it; the other half listened to it. The listeners enjoyed the lesson more than the readers, but when they were quizzed two days later, it was clear that they had learned less. The listeners scored 59 percent; the readers scored 81 percent. Although listening is often more fun, reading improves comprehension and recall. Whereas listening promotes intuitive thinking, reading activates more analytical processing. It’s true in English and Chinese—people display better logical reasoning when the same trivia questions, riddles, and puzzles are written rather than spoken. With print, you naturally slow down at the start of a paragraph to process the core idea and use paragraph breaks and headers to chunk information. Unless you have a reading disability or learning disorder that makes it difficult to parse text, when it comes to critical thinking, there’s no substitute for reading.[*]