One of the most provocative viral YouTube videos in the pasttwo years begins mundanelyenough: a one-year-old girl playswith an iPad, sweeping herfingers across its touch screenand shuffling groups of icons.In following scenes, she appearsto pinch, swipe and prod the pages of paper magazines asthough they, too, are screens.Melodramatically, the video replays these gestures in close-up.

For the girl's father, the video- A Magazine is an iPad ThatDoes Not Work -is evidence of a generational transition. In anaccompanying description. he writes, "Magazines are now uselessand impossible to understand, for digital natives"-that is,for people who have been interacting with digital technologiesfrom a very early age, surrounded not only by paper books andmaga1ines but also by smartphones, Kindles and iPads.

Whether or not his daughter truly expected the magazines tobehave like an iPad, the video brings into focus a question that isrelevant to far more than the youngest among us: How exactlydoes the technology we use to read change the way we read?

Since at least the 1980s researchers in psychology, computerengineering. and library and information science have publishedmore than 100 studies exploring differences in how people read onpaper and on screens. Before 1992 most experiments concludedthat people read stories and articles on screens more slowly andremember less about them. As the resolution of screens on allkinds of devices sharpened, however, a more mixed set of findingsbegan to emerge. Recent surveys suggest that although most peoplestill prefer paper-especially when they need to concentratefor a long time-attitudes are changing as tablets and e-readingtechnology improve and as reading digital texts for facts and funbecomes more common. In the U.S., e-books currently make upmore than 20 percent of all books sold to the general public.

Despite all the increasingly user-friendlyand popular technology, most studies publishedsince the early 1990s confirm earlierconclusions: paper still has advantages overscreens as a reading medium. Together laboratoryexperiments, polls and consumer reportsindicate that digital devices preventpeople from efficiently navigating long texts,which may subtly inhibit reading comprehension.

Compared with paper, screens mayalso drain more of our mental resourceswhile we are reading and make it a littleharder to remember what we read when weare done. Whether they realize it or not, peopleoften approach computers and tabletswith a state of mind less conducive to learningthan the one they bring to paper.

To read the complete article (subscription required), see:The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens(www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-reading-brain-in-the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens)