השפעת השימוש בכלֵי סימון על הבנת הנקרא של טקסט בדפוס לעומת טקסט דיגיטלי

Recent studies that compared reading comprehension between print and
digital displays found a disadvantage for digital reading. A separate line of
research has shown that effective use of learning strategies and active
learning tools (e.g. annotation tools: highlighting, underlining and notetaking) can improve reading comprehension. Here, the influence of
annotation tools on comprehension and their utility in diminishing the gap
between print and digital reading was investigated. In a 2 X 2 experimental
design, ninety three undergraduates (mean age 29.6 years, 72 women) read an
academic essay in print or in digital format, with or without the use of
annotation tools. In general, the results reinforce previous research reports on
the inferiority of digital compared to print reading comprehension. Our
findings indicate that for factual-level questions using annotation tools had no
effect on comprehension in both formats. For the inference-level questions,
however, use of annotation tools improved comprehension of printed text but
not of digital text. In other words, text-annotation in the digital format had no
effect on reading comprehension. In the digital era, digital reading is the
norm rather than the exception; thus, it is essential to improve our
understanding of the factors that influence the comprehension of digital text.