This piece first appeared on RealClearEducation.com on April 16, 2014.
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A recent article in the Washington Post sounds a warning klaxon for our ability to read deeply. You’ve probably heard this argument elsewhere, made most forcefully by Nick Carr in the The Shallows: frequent users of the Web (i.e., most of us) are so in the habit of skittering from page to page, scanning for juicy bits of information but not really reading, that they have lost the ability to sit down and read prose from start to finish. I think the suggestion is probably wrong.

The first thing to make clear is that anyone who comments on this issue (including me) is guessing. There are simply not any data that address it directly. We might predict, for example, that scores on standardized reading tests would have dropped in the last fifteen years or so (they haven’t) but such data are hardly definitive, as reading comprehension test scores are a product of many factors.

The Post article cites studies comparing reading on paper versus reading on screens, but that won’t address the issue, which concerns the long-term consequences of a particular type of reading. The Post also incorrectly says that paper is superior. Most studies indicate no difference between screens and paper for pleasure reading. For textbook reading, students take longer to read on screens, although comprehension is about the same. (Daniel & Willingham, 2012).

The article, like all the pieces I’ve seen on this topic, is short on data and long on individual’s impressions. For example, teachers aver that students can no longer read long novels. Well, if we’re swapping stories, I (and most of my classmates) had a hard time with Faulkner and Joyce back in the early ‘80’s, when I was an English major.

The truth is probably that the brain is simply not adaptable enough for such a radical change. Yes, the brain changes as a consequence of experience, but there are likely limits to this change, a point made by both Steve Pinker and Roger Schank when commenting on this issue. If our ability to deploy attention or to comprehend language processes were to undergo substantial change, the consequences would cascade through the entire cognitive system, and so the brain is probably too conservative for large-scale change.

For example, there’s a lot of overlap in the processes of reading and the processes used for understanding spoken speech—processes that assign syntactic roles to words. Do we see any evidence that people are having a harder time understanding spoken language? Or does the problem lie in the mental processes that build understanding of larger blocks of language, as when we’re comprehending a story? If so, habitual Web users should have a hard time understanding complex narratives not just when they read, but in television and movies. No one should have watched The Sopranos, with its complicated, interweaving plotlines.

A more plausible possibility is that we’re not less capable of reading complex prose, but less willing to put in the work. Our criterion for concluding “this is boring. This is not paying off” has been lowered because the Web makes it so easy to find something else to read, watch, or listen to. (I explore the possibility in some detail in my upcoming book, Raising a Reader in an Age of Distraction.) If I’m right, there’s good news and bad news. The good news is that our brains are not being deep-fried by the Web; we can still read deeply and think carefully. The bad news is that we don’t want to.

Reference

Daniel, D. B. & Willingham, D. T. (2012). Electronic textbooks: Why the rush? Science, 335, 1569-1571.

We are in the midst of an effort to explore what the new technologies enabled by powerful computing and reliable long-distance connection will mean to higher education. (There is, of course, a parallel effort in K-12, but that’s another topic.)

A new entrant is poised to make a bid, and it’s worth some study.

The Minerva Project was initiated by Ben Nelson, the man behind Snapfish (a photo website). His vision is of a university that offers an “uniquely rigorous and challenging university education." (At a price, we might add, that is a relative bargain--reportedly, the target cost is something like half of what the Ivys charge).

The idea is that classes will be delivered via video, and students will then engage in discussion and debate. Importantly, and in pointed contrast to MOOCs, class size will be limited to 25.

Because the university is virtual, students can live anywhere, but they will be encouraged to live in a different world city each semester, perhaps living together to gain some of the face-to-face interactions that many observers consider a significant advantage of bricks-and-mortar university life.

The curriculum will not rest on traditional academic subject divisions (some English, some math, some science) but rather on four essential skills: critical thinking, use of data, understanding complex systems, and effective communication. If that sounds squishy, be forewarned that the courses are planned to be demanding, and students who do not perform well will (gasp) fail the course.

Minerva is trying something quite different than other online higher ed options. Online universities exist, but their appeal has been their low price and low academic standards and, to a lesser extent, flexibility in scheduling. They claim to offer a degree that is comparable to a traditional degree, though few believe that they do.

It’s still not completely obvious how MOOCs (as implemented in Coursera and edX) will evolve, but no one thinks the long-term purpose is to give away courses. The interpretation I hear most often is that they will not seek replace standard degrees, but will offer more of an a la carte education; you take, say, 12 engineering courses (earning certificates showing that you’ve done the work) in the hopes that the reputation of the participating institutions will be enough to persuade an employer that passing the courses means you’ve got the chops for a job—and you’ve paid just a tiny fraction of what a traditional engineering degree would have cost.

Minerva seeks a third way. It promises an elite education, comparable to the most selective schools in the US. They are gambling that this option will appeal to students who were qualified to attend a big-name university, but didn’t get in.

It’s a darn good bet that there are plenty of frustrated students who thought they had the record for admission to Big-Name U; these places reject 75% or more of their applicants.

It’s no accident that the Minerva website notes that admissions decisions will disregard “lineage, state or country of origin, athletic prowess, or ability to donate.” In other words, "if you fear that you will be jostled by affirmative action targets, athletic admissions, legacies, etc., apply here."

The question is whether these students will see Minerva as a viable alternative to traditional schools.  

Naturally, that will depend on the quality of the courses and the curriculum. Minerva has not hired any faculty yet, but Nelson has some high profile members on his board (Larry Summers, Bob Kerrey) and they just hired Steve Kosslyn as the founding Dean of the College. Kosslyn has been a Dean at Harvard and was most recently Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. To lure someone that capable to devote all of his energies to Minerva bodes well for the project.

We may be seeing the first of new wave of elite colleges. In the colonial era and following, this country saw elite colleges founded to train clergy (Harvard, Yale, Princeton). Better than a century later there was another spate, as wealthy industrialists founded new schools or heavily endowed existing ones (U of Chicago, Stanford, Vanderbilt).

There may well be room for a new model of elite higher education, and Minerva, as the first one out of the gate, holds a significant advantage.  

Note:  Thanks to Chris Chabris, whose Facebook post made me aware of Minerva.

Is technology changing how students learn, that is, the workings of the brain?

An article in today's New York Times reports that most teachers think the answer is "yes," and this development is not positive.

The article reports the results of two surveys of teachers, one conducted by the Pew Internet Project, and the other by Common Sense Media. Both report that teachers believe that students' use of digital technology adversely affects their attention spans and makes them less likely to stick with challenging tasks.

In interviews, many teachers report feeling that they have to work harder than they used to in order to keep students engaged.

As the article notes, there have not been any long-term studies that show whether student attention span has been affected by digital media.

Still, a lot of psychologists are actually skeptical that digital media are likely to fundamentally change the fundamentals of human cognition.

Steven Pinker has written "Electronic media aren't going to revamp the brain's mechanisms of information processing." I made the same argument here.

The basic architecture is likely to be relatively fixed, and in the absence of extreme deprivation, will develop fairly predictably. Sure, it is shaped by experience but those changes will just tune to experience what's already there--it might change the dimensions of the rooms, without altering the fundamental floor plan, so to speak.

Does that view conflict with teacher's impressions? Not necessarily.

When we talk about a student's attention span, I suspect we're really talking about a particular type of attention. It's not their overall ability to pay attention: kids today can, I think, get lost for hours in a movie or a book or a game just as readily as their parents did. Rather, the seemingly shorter attention span is their ability to maintain attention on a task that is not very interesting to them.

But even within that situation, I suspect that there are two factors at work: one is the raw capacity to direct one's attention. The second is the willingness to do so.

I doubt that technology affects the first, but I'm ready to believe that it affects the second.

Directing attention--forcing yourself to think about something you'd rather not think about--is effortful, even mildly aversive. Why would you do it? There are lots of possible reasons. Among them would be previous experiences leading you to believe that such sustained attention leads to a payoff.

In other words, if you've grown up in circumstances where very little effort  usually led to something that was stimulating and interesting, then you likely have an expectation that that's the nature of the world: I do just a little something, and I get a big payoff. (And the payoff is probably immediate.)

The process by which children learn to expect a lot of cool stuff to happen based on minimal effort may start early.

When a toddler is given a toy that puts on a dazzling display of light and sound when a button is pushed, we might be teaching him this lesson.
In contrast, the toddler who gets a set of blocks has to put a heck of a lot more effort (and sustained attention) into getting the toy to do something interesting--build a tower, for example, that she can send crashing down.

It's hard for me to believe that something as fundamental to cognition as the ability to pay attention can moved around a whole lot. It's much easier for me to accept that one's beliefs--beliefs about what is worthy of my attention, beliefs about how much effort I should dispense to tasks--can be moved around, because beliefs are a product of experience.

I actually think that much of what I've written here was implicit in some of the teachers' comments--the emphasis on immediacy, for example--but it's worth making it explicit.

The importance of a good relationship between teacher and student is no surprise. More surprising is that the "human touch" is so powerful it can improve computer-based learning.

In a series of ingenious yet simple experiments, Rich Mayer and Scott DaPra showed that students learn better from an onscreen slide show when it is accompanied by an onscreen avatar that uses social cues.

Eighty-eight college students watched a 4-minute Powerpoint slide show that explained how a solar cell converts sunlight to electricity. It  consisted of 11 slides and a voice-over explanation.

Some subjects saw an avatar which used a full compliment of social cues (gesturing, changing posture, facial expression, changes in eye gaze, and lip movements synchronized to speech) which were meant to direct student attention to relevant features of the slide show.

Other subjects saw an avatar that maintained the same posture, maintained eye gaze straight ahead, and did not move (except for lip movements synchronized to speech).

A third group saw no avatar at all, but just saw the slides and listened to the narration.

All subjects were later tested with fact-based recall questions and transfer questions (e.g. "how could you increase the electrical output of a solar power?") meant to test subjects ability to apply their knowledge to new situations.

There was no difference among the three groups on the retention test, but there was a sizable advantage (d = .90) for the high embodiment subjects on the transfer test. (The low-embodiment and no-avatar groups did not differ.)

A second experiment showed that the effect was only obtained when a human voice was used; the avatar did not boost learning when synchronized to a machine voice.

The experimenters emphasized the social aspect of the situation to learning; students process the slideshow differently because the avatar is "human enough" for them to treat it prime interaction like those learners would use with a real person. This interpretation seems especially plausible in light of the second experiment; all of the more cognitive cues (e.g., the shifts in the avatar's eye gaze prompting shifts in learner's attention) were still present in the machine-voice condition, yet there was no advantage to learners.

There is something special about learning from another person. Surprisingly, that other person can be an avatar.

Mayer, R. E. & DaPra, C. S. (2012). An embodiment effect in computer-based learning with animated pedagogical agents. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 18,  239-252.

A lot of people have been tweeting or posting to Facebook a link to a graph which was posted to the Atlantic Monthly website on April 6, with this provocative headline:

And here's the chart you are urged to show, derived from Gallup poll numbers over the years.

We're invited to conclude that because the percentage of readers increased after the advent of the Internet, the Internet did not have a negative impact on book reading.

All of the postings I've seen have apparently taken this conclusion at face value, so it seems like it's worth going through why this conclusion is not justified.

First, lots of stuff happened between 1949 and 2005. For example, household income increased for middle- and high-income families. It could be that the internet has negatively affected book reading, but a number of other factors have increased it, so overall we see an increase. The idea that other factors are having a big impact on reading seems legitimate, given the big increase in reading from 1957 to 1990, a year in which very few people had internet access. So perhaps those factors are continuing to boost reading, despite the negative impact of the internet.

The type of analysis we're being asked to perform implicitly is a variety of time series analysis. It's useful in situations where one can't conduct an experiment with a control group. For example, I might track classroom behavior daily for one month using a scale that runs from 1-10. I find that it ranges from 4 to 6 every day. The teacher implements a new classroom management scheme, and from that day forward, classroom behavior ranges from 7 to 9 every day.

Interpreting the new classroom management scheme as the cause of the change is still not certain--some outside-of-class-factor could have just happened to have occurred on that same day that prompted the change in classroom behavior. But the fact that the change in behavior happened over such a narrow time window makes us more confident that such a coincidence is unlikely.

And of course it helps my confidence that it's the same class. In the chart above, we're looking at events that happened over years, with different people who we hope had similar characteristics.

To really get at the effect of the internet on reading habits, you need more finely controlled data. A number of studies were done in the 1950s, examining the effect of television on reading habits. The best of these (see Coffin, 1955) measured reading habits in a city that did not have a television station but was poised to get one, and then measured reading habit again after people in the city had access to television. (The results showed an impact on reading, especially light fiction. Newspaper reading was mostly unaffected, as television news was still in its infancy. Radio listening took a big hit.)

Second, we might note that the most recent year on the chart is 2005. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, only 55% of Americans had internet access at that point, and only 30% had broadband. So perhaps the negative impact wouldn't be observed until more people had internet access.

This brings us to more serious studies of whether use of the Internet displaces other activities. The studies I know of (e.g., Robinson, 2010) conclude that Internet use does not displace other activities, but rather enhances them. The data are actually a bit weird--IT use is associated with more of everything: more leisure reading, more newspaper reading, more visits to museums, playing music, volunteering, and participating in sports.

The obvious explanation would be that heavy IT users have higher incomes and more leisure time, but the relationships held after the author controlled for education, age, race, gender, and income--though most of these effects were much attenuated.

This research is really just getting going, and I don't think we're very close to understanding problem.

In sum, the question of what people do with their leisure time and how one activity influences another is complicated. One chart will not settle it.




Coffin, T. E. (1955) Television's impact on society. American Psychologist, 10, 630-641.
Robinson, J. P. (2011) Arts and leisure participation among IT users: Further evidence of time enhancement over time displacement. Social Science Computer Review, 29,  470-480.