Reading Poetry from Paper Versus Screen: Media Technologies and Transformations of Perception
Keywords:
empirical literary science, literature and media, print media, electronic media, digital media, poetry, reading, empirical researchAbstract
The aim of this paper is to test the thesis from media history that by transforming ways of presenting, transmitting, and receiving, technological innovations also transform individual consciousness – ways of apprehending, experiencing, remembering, recollecting, recognizing, and understanding. We attempt to do this with the aid of an empirical, cognitive approach. We are specifically interested in the higher cognitive processes of understanding and recollecting while reading select poetic texts on paper and on screen. We do not take a position on which way of reading is superior. Our interest is in how the complementarity of cognitive processes the two reading media facilitate and cognitive processes the characteristics of select texts generate influence the “quality” of recollection and understanding. Among the most interesting results from the pilot study stage, which employs a kind of behavioral test on young subjects, is that poetry that depends on regular use (repetition) of rhyme or rhyme and meter in order to support understanding and recollecting processes is not better committed to memory than more freely structured (and less regular) poetry. Neither do results show statistically relevant differences between the two ways of reading, leading us to conclude that textual traits rather than presentation mode produce “quality” reading. We close with thoughts about the research project’s limitations and describe its continuation.References
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