Reading and Writing (2022) 35:1549–1568

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-021-10246-2

Reading in print versus digital media uses different

cognitive strategies: evidence from eye movements
during science‑text reading

Yu‑Cin Jian1

Accepted: 20 December 2021 / Published online: 27 January 2022

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022

Abstract
Comparing comprehension outcomes in print and digital reading is an active area of
research but little is known about the reading processes that these media entail. This
study involved an eye-tracking experiment with 50 undergraduate students to inves-
tigate the differences in reading processes in print and digital media. The partici-
pants were randomly assigned to read the same six-page popular science article that
included several diagrams either in print or on a tablet computer and then answer
reading comprehension questions. The results showed that comprehension was bet-
ter when reading in print. Eye-movement data indicated that the print and digital
groups spent about the same amount of time processing the article, texts, diagrams,
and diagram statements, but the time was not divided evenly between the first pass
and the rereading stages. The digital group spent more time reading the article at
the first-pass reading stage and seldom reread it. In contrast, the print group first
skimmed the article and then reread the important parts, exhibiting both longer total
fixation durations in the rereading stage and a higher number of rereading instances
across pages. In sum, the findings indicate that reading in print versus digital media
employs different cognitive strategies with those reading in print showing more
selective and intentional reading behavior.

Keywords Digital reading · Eye movements · Science text · Print reading ·

Cognitive strategies

* Yu‑Cin Jian
jianyucin@ntnu.edu.tw
1
Department of Educational Psychology and Counseling, National Taiwan Normal University
in Taiwan, No. 129, HePing East Road, Section 1, Taipei, Taiwan

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 1550 Y.-C. Jian

Introduction

Technological developments can have a great impact on reading. Besides books,

students use various reading media (e.g., tablets, smartphones) in their daily lives.
Reading text from screens is also called digital reading or reading electronic text
(Clinton, 2019). Although the reading opportunities and preferences for print
reading may not be replaced by digital reading for most people (Baron, 2020), a
new medium may attract readers who subsequently revert in whole or part to tra-
ditional media choices such as books (De Waal & Schoenbach, 2010). Therefore,
knowing the pros and cons of reading in print and digital media and discovering
what cognitive strategies are involved while reading in different media are impor-
tant topics of interest.
So far, we have some knowledge regarding the advantages and disadvantages
of reading on digital media. Reading from screens is advantageous due to lower
costs, accessibility, and faster transportation of the reading materials compared to
physical books (Baron, 2020). However, some critics such as Dillon et al. (1988)
point out that reading on screen is slower, less accurate, more fatiguing, leads to
poorer comprehension, and feels subjectively less effective than reading in print.
Recent research indicated that readers did not derive positive reading experiences
and pleasant engagement from digital reading similar to print reading (Kazanci,
2015; Mangen & Kuiken, 2014). The existing research (see reviews by Clinton,
2019, and Singer & Alexander, 2017) indicates that reading from screens involves
poorer self-regulation (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011; Ackerman & Lauterman,
2012; Liu, 2005). Most of the research have reported that reading in print results
in better reading comprehension than digital media (Ackerman & Goldsmith,
2011; Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012; Lenhard et al., 2017; Mangen et al., 2013;
Singer et al., 2017). However, some studies have reported the opposite results, or
that the type of media had no significant effect on reading comprehension (Dan-
iel & Woody, 2013; Dundar & Akcayir, 2012; Margolin et al., 2013). In sum,
the empirical studies examining reading comprehension and reading time of print
versus digital reading have reported that reading on the screen is quicker, but
comprehension is poorer; that reading on screen is quicker and comprehension is
the same as reading in print; and that reading on screen takes longer, but there are
no differences in reading comprehension as compared to reading in print.
For the first result, Singer et al. (2017) postulated that print and digital medi-
ums played a different role in the way students comprehended and spent their
time reading texts. They recruited undergraduate students to read print and digi-
tal (PDF files) forms of two expository articles. The length of time that partici-
pants spent reading each text was recorded. The results showed that there was a
significant advantage of print reading on reading comprehension, especially for
recalling key points and other relevant information. However, the participants
read significantly faster on computer than on paper. Lenhard et al. (2017) asked
elementary-school students to complete a standard reading comprehension test
either on screen or on paper and found that the students were quick to complete
the task on the screen, but comprehension was poor. This result corresponds to

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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1551

the effect of the speed accuracy trade-off (Wickelgren, 1977) that has been dem-
onstrated in a number of domains, including reading tasks (Dyson & Haselgrove,
2000).
Other studies have found no differences between print and digital reading. Mar-
golin et al. (2013) asked undergraduate students to read narrative and expository
texts either on an e-reader, a computer screen, or on paper, and then answer multi-
ple-choice questions that required thought and reflection rather than simply memo-
rizing content. The results suggested that the type of reading media did not differ-
entially affect the comprehension of narrative or expository texts, or reading rate.
Similarly, Eden and Eshet-Alkalai (2013) found that undergraduates detected and
corrected mistakes (including mistyped words, homophonic, morphological, seman-
tic, and syntactic errors) in science texts quicker on digital media, but the accuracy
did not differ across the two media. Finally, Dundar and Akcayir (2012) found no
significant differences in reading comprehension of fifth graders reading textbooks
in print or on digital media.
Finally, Daniel and Woody (2013) asked undergraduates to read textbooks and
found that students exhibited longer processing times while reading e-textbooks, but
the level of reading comprehension was similar to that of reading the textbook in
print. In other words, the efficiency of reading comprehension was worse for digital
reading. Daniel and Woody attributed this result to possible feelings of fatigue from
reading on digital media, and concluded that the students need to be given more
time to study textbook contents.
Although the above studies compared reading comprehension and processing
time in print versus digital media during expository text reading, illustrated texts
have rarely been used as reading materials in this research. As many expository text
(e.g., scientific texts) have multiple representations (e.g., words, diagrams, diagram
statements), digital literacy involves not only word processing but also the ability
to acquire information from diagrams (Eshet-Alkalai & Chajut, 2009). Therefore,
it is necessary to investigate whether reading comprehension and reading processes
differ between print and digital media during reading of illustrated texts. Further,
texts and diagrams have different functions in cognitive processes (Jian & Wu, 2021;
Schnotz & Bannert, 2003; Schnotz et al., 2014). Text usually serves as a concep-
tual guide for initial comprehension (Schnotz & Wagner, 2018), while pictures are
used as a mental scaffold to facilitate mental model construction (Eitel et al., 2013).
Hence, it is worth examining if readers spend different amount of time processing
these parts while reading in print and digital media.

Eye movements in print and digital reading

Eye tracking is a suitable tool for exploring online reading processes as it provides
rich information of “when/time” and “where/location” readers pay attention to when
reading materials (Just & Carpenter, 1980; Reichle et al., 1999). Many studies have
demonstrated that eye tracking data is helpful to uncover readers’ processing strate-
gies during reading (Chen & Chen, 2020; Jian, 2018, 2019, 2021; Kim et al., 2018;
Liao et al., 2020; Mason et al., 2013; Tsai et al., 2019; 2021).

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 1552 Y.-C. Jian

However, most existing studies have examined reading behaviors by using read-
ing material presented on a screen due to technical difficulties in collecting, record-
ing, and analyzing eye movement data while reading a book. Pages in a book usu-
ally have relatively curved surfaces that hinder the match of the exact eye fixation
locations required for software calculations. Nonetheless, highly developed software
has gradually resolved this problem. According to a literature review by Singer and
Alexander (2017), only two studies (Siegenthaler et al., 2011; Zambarbieri & Car-
niglia, 2012) have investigated the reading processes of print and digital text using
eye-tracking technology. Siegenthaler et al. (2011) asked college participants to read
a 12-page novel and recorded their eye fixations, but the students read one page on
each reading device (including one book and five e-book devices) in two test ses-
sions. This experimental procedure may inherently produce inconsistent results, as
readers had to change to a new device after completing one page of reading, which
is an unnatural process that may break the semantic coherence of the reading mate-
rial. In the study by Zambarbieri and Carniglia (2012), undergraduate students were
asked to read a comic novel in print and digital media. The result revealed similar
eye movement patterns in print and digital reading. However, reading comprehen-
sion outcomes were not measured in their study.
Although these two studies used eye trackers to investigate the reading processes
of print and digital text reading, they used fiction and comics as reading materials.
Text genre (e.g., narrative and expository) affects the way the readers process the
texts (Best et al., 2008; Kraal et al., 2017), and readers show different eye move-
ment patterns for reading narrative and expository texts (Kraal et al., 2017). Some
studies reviewed above used expository learning materials (e.g., Ackerman & Gold-
smith, 2011; Daniel & Woody, 2013; Davis & Neitzel; Eden & Eshet-Alkalai, 2013;
Mangen et al., 2013; Margolin et al., 2013), but did not collect eye movement data
to examine the cognitive processes in print and digital reading. In addition, many
expository texts (e.g., scientific texts) contain diagrams, and diagram diversity is a
fundamental characteristic of scientific articles. Therefore, the present study com-
bines online (i.e., eye movements) and offline (i.e., comprehension tests) data to
investigate the potential differences between reading a scientific article in print and
digital media.

Reading strategies and metacognitive regulation of print versus digital reading

Readers’ metacognition (e.g., comprehension monitoring, self-regulation) has a

great influence on adopting a specific reading strategy, and results in differences
in the reading processes (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011; Ackerman & Lauterman,
2012; Goldsmith, 2011; Liu, 2005). Reading strategy and metacognition are closely
related and therefore are jointly discussed in this section. Ackerman and Goldsmith
(2011) compared undergraduates’ cognitive (e.g., encoding, information storage)
and metacognitive (e.g., self-regulated study time, prediction of performance) pro-
cesses when they read expository texts in print or on digital media, and found that
the primary differences between print and digital reading lay in the metacognitive
regulation rather than in the cognitive processes. Liu (2005) asked undergraduate

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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1553

students to think aloud while they read on a screen, and found that they spent a lot
of time browsing and scanning the text, keyword spotting, one-time rereading rather
than back-and-forth reading, and non-linear reading. The participants also reported
that it was harder for them to maintain their attention on the text displayed on
screens, and therefore, they did not spend enough time concentrating on the infor-
mation to ensure deep processing. This response implied that readers invested less
cognitive effort on processing the information when reading from digital media.
In contrast, Davis and Neitzel (2012) found that middle-school students were
more strategic in digital than in print reading. They asked sixth- and seventh-grad-
ers to read expository articles in paper and computer formats and discuss their con-
tent. They collected video and screen recording data and found that students read-
ing collaboratively from paper with their peers displayed “covering text” behaviors
(reading the text silently or aloud, or listening to a partner read the text aloud). In
contrast, students reading texts on the computer were more likely to engage in “pre-
viewing” (skimming an article or set of hyperlinks before deciding where to begin
reading), and “process monitoring” (making a plan for how to approach the reading,
asking about or evaluating the progress a dyad was making towards accomplishing
this plan, or giving explicit directions to a partner about how to proceed with the
work), but no differences in reading comprehension were found between the two
conditions. In sum, the research on learning strategies involved in reading texts in
print versus digital format is inconclusive.

The present study

This study investigates the reading processes and comprehension outcomes of

reading an illustrated scientific text in print or on a tablet computer. Scientific dia-
grams have multiple functions. According to the classification provided by Carney
and Levin (2002), a decorative diagram, such as a photograph, has a less cognitive
function. In contrast, a representational diagram has a more cognitive function as it
comprises labels and spatial structures to represent an abstract description of a text.
In turn, an explanatory diagram shows a series of steps involved in performing an
action. Finally, statistical diagrams are commonly used in scientific texts for convey-
ing the findings of relationships between variables. Therefore, this study used these
four types of diagrams in the reading material and investigated if there were differ-
ences in viewing or reading processes of these diagrams in print and digital read-
ing. In addition, readers’ preferences for reading either in print or on digital media
(Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012; Lenhard et al., 2017; Margolin et al., 2013), prior
knowledge (Jian & Ko, 2014; Tobias, 1994; Song et al., 2016; Wade & Kidd, 2019),
and reading interest (Tobias, 1994; Song et al., 2016; Wade & Kidd, 2019) may
influence their performance. Therefore, their possible effects were controlled.
The first research question addressed in this study is: Does reading an illustrated
scientific text in print and on digital media result in differences in reading compre-
hension? On the basis of the existing findings (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011; Ack-
erman & Lauterman, 2012; Lenhard et al., 2017; Mangen et al., 2013; Singer et al.,
2017), it was expected that reading comprehension would be better in print reading.

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 1554 Y.-C. Jian

The second research question is: Does reading an illustrated scientific text in print
and on digital media involve different reading processes and strategies? This ques-
tion is examined using eye movement data. Because of inconsistent reading time
results in previous studies (Daniel & Woody, 2013; Lenhard et al., 2017; Singer
et al., 2019), no specific predictions were made regarding the total processing time
of the article. However, the print group was expected to use scientific diagrams stra-
tegically which would result in longer processing time in viewing these diagrams,
especially representational and explanatory diagrams, that involve a cognitive func-
tion (Carney & Levin, 2002). Further, previous studies have indicated that reading
on a screen entails surface processing strategies (e.g., memorization information)
instead of deep processing strategies (e.g., organization, elaboration, and monitor-
ing of information) (Liu, 2005), and participants reading in print have shown bet-
ter comprehension-monitoring and self-regulation (Ackerman & Goldsmith, 2011).
Therefore, it was expected that print and digital groups would show different eye
movement patterns. Specifically, the print group was expected to show more selec-
tive and intentional reading behaviors, such as spending time on rereading important
sections of the text and diagrams.

Methods

Participants

Sixty-four undergraduate students (Mage = 20.88 years, SD = 1.69) were recruited

from a wide range of disciplines but excluding the departments of geography and
earth science because these students might have had prior knowledge of the read-
ing materials used. Participants were native speakers of Chinese, which was the lan-
guage used in the reading material, and had normal or corrected-to-normal vision.
All participants volunteered to take part in the experiment and provided written
consent.

Materials

The reading material was a popular science article from the magazine Scientific
American, describing slow earthquakes triggered by typhoons (written by Liu,
2009). This topic was chosen because the country where the participants lived expe-
riences typhoons often, so they could be interested in this topic. The article was
six pages long, contained nine diagrams (three decorative, two representational, one
organizational, and three statistical), and several paragraphs in each of the sections,
divided under four subtitles: The hidden energy of seismology; Discovering slow
earthquakes in Taiwan; How do typhoons trigger slow earthquakes?; and Changes in
atmospheric pressure.
The size of the pages for both the print and digital groups was approximately
26.67 cm × 20.3 cm. PDF format was used for the digital media. Participants in the
digital group used their finger to swipe right or left for turning pages on a tablet

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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1555

computer, with one page being displayed on the screen at a time. To ensure consist-
ency in the eye movement analysis, enlarging or reducing font size was not allowed.
Thus, the font sizes were equal for both groups and could not influence the results of
the eye movement analyses.

Measures

Demographic survey

The participants completed a demographic questionnaire that included questions

on age, gender, preferences for print or digital reading, and science-reading habits
(1 = almost never; 2 = sometimes/about 3–4 times per month; and 3 = very often/
more than 5 times per month).

Test of prior knowledge

To ascertain the relative novelty of the topic for participants and to ensure equal
prior knowledge in the print and digital groups, a knowledge test about atmospheric
pressure and earthquakes was conducted. It included ten multiple-choice questions,
which were examined by two experts who taught earth science in middle school and
had master’s degrees in science education or earth science.

Reading comprehension test

To measure different dimensions of comprehension, the comprehension test con-

sisted of a free-recall question (“Please, recall the article content as much as pos-
sible”), a main-idea question (“What is the main idea of this article?”), two text
retrieval questions (“Please explain what a “slow earthquake” is,” and “Describe
the characteristics of a slow earthquake”) that measured memorization of specific
information, and two questions that required making inferences (“The earthquake
frequency and Richter magnitude scale of eastern Taiwan are lower than Japan, but
the relative reduction of the plate is higher than that of Japan, reaching 8 cm per
year. Does this energy disappear? Please provide explanations,” and “Please explain
why an ordinary seismograph cannot record slow earthquakes”). A “concept” was
used as a scoring unit rather than a “sentence,” so including one “concept” was
awarded one point. A scoring example is shown in the Appendix. All questions and
pre-established answers were confirmed by two PhD science experts to ensure the
validity. Participants’ responses were rated by two independent raters. The Cohen’s
Kappa coefficient was 0.84 and disagreements were resolved by a discussion. Since
each type of question was one-of-its-kind, test scores are not reported separately, but
summed across all questions.

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 1556 Y.-C. Jian

Apparatus

Eye movements were recorded using Tobii Pro Glasses 2 at a sampling rate of
100 Hz. A bridle was used to fix the eye tracker system to participants’ head. Par-
ticipants who were assigned to the digital condition used a 13-inch ASUS Surface
tablet computer.
To record the eye fixation data with precision, the reading material was placed
on a vertical bookrack that was fixed to the experimental desk. Participants were
asked to place themselves in a way that allowed for the reading material to be at
30–50 cm from their eyes. This step was taken because if the reading material
had been placed on the desk and participants had read it from the corner of their
eye, the eye tracker would not be able to record their eye fixations.

Procedure

The experiment was conducted with one participant at a time. Participants

were randomly assigned to one of the two groups: print or digital. Before read-
ing the article, participants completed the prior knowledge test. Next, they were
requested to read the scientific article—with no time limit—and told that they
could turn the pages at their will. They were also informed that they would com-
plete a reading comprehension test afterwards and that they would not be able to
access the article while answering the questions. After reading the article, they
completed the paper-and-pencil reading comprehension test. Participants rated
their interest in the article on a 5-point scale (1 = “very interesting” to 5 = “very
boring”) and the difficulty of the article (1 = “very easy” to 5 = “very difficult”).
This procedure lasted for approximately 60 min.

Data selection and eye‑fixation indicators

Data from 14 participants were excluded for the following reasons: poor eye cal-
ibration (one participant), substantial changes in pupil position and failed data
transfer (three participants), the eye-tracking computer crashed or recording
failed (three participants), gaze-samples were lower than 70% (four participants),
and the total article reading time was 2 standard deviations above or below the
mean (four participants). Therefore, data was analyzed from 50 participants.

Eye movement indicators

Total fixation duration refers to the total duration of fixations on the areas of
interest (AOIs). Text sections, diagrams, and diagram statements were used as
AOIs in this study. This index represents cognitive effort in processing the read-
ing material. Generally, the higher the total fixation duration on a specific AOI,

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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1557

the more intense the cognitive processing of the material (Hegarty & Just, 1993;
Jian, 2021; Miller, 2015; Wu & Liu, 2021).
First-pass fixation duration was calculated as the total duration of all fixations
on the AOI during the initial reading and before exiting it. This index represents
the initial reading process, which is more automatic and includes the decoding of
words or objects and the preliminary extraction of meaning from a text (Hyönä
et al., 2003; Jian et al., 2019; Kaakinen et al., 2003; Mason et al., 2013; Hender-
son et al., 1999).
Rereading (or second-pass) fixation duration was calculated as the duration of
all fixations returning to a target region that has already been processed after its
initial reading. It reflects a more intentional and deeper processing, such as read-
ing again to solve doubts from the initial reading, or to reselect important infor-
mation to ensure deeper processing (Henderson et al., 1999; Hyönä et al., 2003;
Jian et al., 2019; Kaakinen et al., 2003; Mason et al., 2013).
Number of rereading instances across pages was calculated as the number
of instances in which readers turned the pages (i.e., previous, next, and one or
several pages) and made more than one saccade between two fixations (each
longer than 100 ms) on a page. If readers were reading the same text and sud-
denly jumped from page 2 to page 1, or from page 4 to page 3, these movements
were not regarded as rereading across pages. Regardless of the reading media, if
the fixations did not last longer than 100 ms, they were not calculated as reread-
ing across pages (e.g., page scrolling might lead to several fixations of less than
100 ms on more than two pages, but these were not calculated as a rereading).
Besides, in the print reading condition, readers saw two pages when they turned
one page. Thus, to ensure consistency for the two groups, one rereading instance
was defined as the rereading of one page once (i.e., a page that had fixations on
it). For example, if a reader turned one page backwards to reread information, and
there were fixations on both displayed pages, the number of rereading instances
was two. The same calculation was used for the digital condition.

Results

Participants’ characteristics and demographic measures

To confirm that participants’ characteristics and demographic measures were

comparable, five variables were analyzed with t-tests: age, science reading habit,
prior knowledge, article interest, and article difficulty. The means and standard
deviations are presented in Table 1. Two categorical variables were analyzed
using chi-squares: gender (58% in the print group were female, and 61% in the
digital group were female) and reading preferences for print or digital reading
(67% in the print group preferred print text reading, and 65% in the digital group
preferred print text reading). The results showed that the two groups did not differ
significantly in any of the seven variables (all ps > 0.05).

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 1558 Y.-C. Jian

Table 1  Means and standard Print Group Digital Group

deviations of the print and (N = 24) (N = 26)
digital groups’ characteristics
and the reading test scores M SD M SD

Age 21.08 1.84 20.69 1.54

Science-reading habits 1.35 0.49 1.46 0.65
Prior knowledge test 5.88 1.70 6.00 1.47
Article interest 3.08 0.88 2.92 1.41
Article difficulty 3.75 0.53 3.80 0.74
Total scores of reading test 12.04 3.83 9.69 3.55

Reading comprehension

To answer the first research question of whether reading media (print versus digi-
tal) affected reading comprehension, an ANOVA was first conducted with group as
an independent variable and the reading comprehension test score as the depend-
ent variable. The result (the bottom of Table 1) showed that the print group had
significantly higher total scores in the reading comprehension test than the digital
group (F(1, 48) = 5.07, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.10). To confirm if the difference in reading
comprehension test scores was influenced by the reading time, an ANCOVA was
conducted with the total fixation durations for the whole article (the top of Table 2)
as the covariate. The result showed that the article reading time affected the reading
comprehension test scores (F(1, 47) = 7.68, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.14), and that the print
group still had significantly higher total scores in the reading comprehension test
compared to the digital group (F(1, 47) = 4.21, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.08).

Table 2  Means and standard Print Group Digital Group

deviations of total fixation (N = 24) (N = 26)
durations for the two groups
M SD M SD

Fixation durations
Whole article 1090.59 543.50 955.78 355.01
Texts
First-pass reading 436.58 205.21 515.87 226.70
Rereading 433.11 360.20 235.94 199.47
Total texts 869.69 455.96 751.81 276.62
Diagrams
First-pass reading 42.24 18.96 52.29 34.13
Rereading 59.82 57.66 33.44 37.34
Total diagrams 102.06 66.58 85.73 52.26
Diagram Statements
First-pass reading 55.18 34.62 81.39 55.41
Rereading 63.66 54.68 36.85 35.35
Total diagram statements 118.84 63.89 118.24 66.85

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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1559

Analysis of eye movements

To answer the second research question—whether reading media (print versus

digital) affected reading processes during illustrated science text reading—several
eye movement measures for the text, diagrams, and diagram statements were ana-
lyzed. A two-way MANOVA was conducted with the eye movement measures as
the dependent variables and group (print or digital) and reading stage (first-pass or
rereading) as the independent variables.

The total fixations durations

The results in Table 2 show that the print and digital groups spent about the same
amount of time in processing the whole article, texts, diagrams, and diagram state-
ments (p > 0.05). However, the time was not divided evenly between the first-pass
and rereading stages, with the digital group spending more time during the first and
the print group during the second. The detailed results from the subsequent ANO-
VAs are reported below.
For the eye movements in the texts sections, there was a main effect of reading
stages (F(1, 48) = 8.34, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.15), no main effect of group ( p > 0.05), and
an interaction effect of group by reading stages (F(1, 48) = 7.94, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.14)
on the total fixation duration. Table 2 indicates that the digital group showed a large
difference between the two reading stages whereas the print group did not. In addi-
tion, both groups had similar total fixation durations while reading text sections in
the first-pass stage; however, the print group spent more time reading text sections in
the rereading stage than the digital group.
For the diagrams, there was no main effects of group or reading stage on the total
fixation duration (p > 0.05), but the interaction effect was significant (F(1, 48) = 6.25,
p < 0.05, η2 = 0.12). Table 2 indicates that the digital group spent more time examining
the diagrams on the first-pass than on the rereading stage, whereas the opposite was true
for the print group. Figure 1 indicates that there was a tendency for the digital group to
spend more time in the first-pass stage for all types of diagrams and for the print group
to spend more time in the rereading stage especially for decorative and representational
diagrams. The group by reading stage interactions effect was significant for the deco-
rative diagrams (F(1, 48) = 8.18, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.15) and the representational diagrams
(F(1, 48) = 16.57, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.26). In addition, there was a main effect of reading
stage for the statistics diagrams (F(1, 48) = 7.02, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.13), indicating that the
readers spent significantly more time on viewing the statistical diagrams in the first-
pass than the rereading stages. There were no significant main or interaction effects on
the total fixation durations of the explanatory diagrams (ps > 0.05).
For the diagram statements, there were no main effects for groups or reading stages
on the total fixation duration (p > 0.05), but the interaction effect was significant (F(1,
48) = 8.29, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.15). Table 2 indicates that the digital group spent signifi-
cantly more time reading diagram statements on the first-pass than on rereading stage,
but the print group had similar fixation durations on the diagram statements on both
reading stages. In addition, on the first-pass stage, the digital group spent more time
processing the diagram statements than the print group whereas the opposite was true

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 1560 Y.-C. Jian

Fig. 1  Total fixation durations on different diagram types for the two groups during the first-pass and
rereading stages

for the rereading stage. As for different types of diagram statements (see Fig. 2), the
results showed a significant main effect of reading stage on decorative diagram state-
ments (F(1, 47) = 4.42, p < 0.05, η2 = 0.09), and group by reading stage interaction
effects for the decorative (F(1, 47) = 19.05, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.29), and representational
(F(1, 47) = 12.11, p < 0.01, η2 = 0.21) diagram statements. In addition, there was
a main effect of reading stage on the statistics diagram statements (F(1, 48) = 7.02,
p < 0.05, η2 = 0.13), indicating that the groups spent significantly more time process-
ing the statistics diagram statements during the first-pass than the rereading stage.
However, there were no main effects or interaction effects of group and reading stage
on the fixation durations for the representational and explanatory diagram statements.

Rereading instances across pages

T-tests were used to examine between-group difference in eye movement measures.

To ensure that our calculations were based on a criterion that corresponded to that
of the digital group, participants’ eye fixations across pages 1 and 2, 3 and 4, and
5 and 6 were calculated as turning page behaviors. If there were paragraphs that
extended across two continuous pages but belonged under the same subtitle, eye fix-
ations across these two pages were not calculated as turning page behaviors.
Except for page 5 that included three statistical diagrams and their statements,
the print group had significantly more rereading instances across pages than the
digital group: page 1 (t (48) = 4.19, p < 0.001), page 2 (t (48) = 3.18, p < 0.01),
page 3 (t (48) = 3.01, p < 0.01), page 4 (t (48) = 2.94, p < 0.01), and page 6 (t
(48) = 3.19, p < 0.01) (Fig. 3).

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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1561

Fig. 2  Total fixation durations on different diagram statements for the two groups during the first-pass
and rereading stages

Discussion

This study utilized eye tracking to examine the differences in reading processes and
reading comprehension when undergraduate students read a scientific text either in
print or on digital media. Moreover, this study used illustrated text as the reading
material, thereby extending the findings of previous research that used text without
illustrations to compare reading in print and digital media (e.g., Lenhard et al., 2017;
Zambarbieri & Carniglia, 2012).

print digital
2.50

2.00
1.79
1.63
1.50
1.50 1.42
Numbers

1.29
1.21

1.00
.73
.65
.58 .54
0.50 .35
.27

0.00
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6

Fig. 3  Bar chart of the number of rereading instances across pages for both groups

13
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 1562 Y.-C. Jian

Regarding the first research question, as expected, the participants in the print
condition showed better reading comprehension outcomes than those in the digital
condition, even after controlling for the total fixation durations for the article. This
result is in line with previous studies conducted with younger children (e.g., Kerr &
Symons, 2006; Lenhard et al., 2017), adolescents (e.g., Mangen et al., 2013), and
using non-illustrated texts as reading material (e.g., Singer et al., 2019; Singer &
Alexander, 2017; Stoop et al., 2013). The benefits of print reading were significant,
supporting studies that used expository texts (Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012; Singer
et al., 2019) and comics (Hou et al., 2017; Zambarbieri & Carniglia, 2012) as read-
ing materials. One possible explanation for this result can be based on the theory of
textual landscapes (Jabr, 2013), which suggests that the human brain prefers print to
digital reading because the former helps readers to construct a better mental repre-
sentation of a text, thereby allowing better recall of content details and information
locations. Another explanation may be that print reading leads to better comprehen-
sion due to the absence of visual fatigue, which may be induced differently by print
and digital media. Benedetto et al. (2013) found that LCD (Kindle Fire HD) may
trigger higher visual fatigue than both an E-ink (Kindle Paperwhite) or a paper book.
Regarding the second research question, the processing time of the whole article did
not differ significantly between the groups, which corresponds to the findings of some
previous studies (Clinton, 2019; Dundar & Akcayir, 2012). However, when the processing
time was divided into first-pass and rereading stages, the results indicated that the group
by reading stage interaction effects were significant for texts, diagrams, and diagram state-
ments. Specifically, the digital group spent about twice the amount of time studying the
material during the first-pass than during the rereading stage, whereas the print group split
their time evenly between the two reading stages. As a result, the print group returned to
earlier information much more frequently than the digital group. Rereading reflects more
intentional processing, such as reading again to solve doubts from the initial reading or
reselecting important information for deeper processing (Henderson et al., 1999; Hyönä
et al., 2003; Jian et al., 2019; Kaakinen et al., 2003; Mason et al., 2013). This implies that
the reading strategies of the print group were more selective and adjustable. One pos-
sible explanation for this result can be based on the metacognitive self-regulation and
how learners activate and sustain their cognitive, affective, and behavioral capabilities to
achieve personal goals (Zimmerman, 1986). The results of this study suggest that readers
in the print group were more capable of adjusting their reading strategies to spend more
effort and time on some specific sections (e.g., representational diagrams and their state-
ments, cause-and-effect paragraphs relative to the core concept of the article) to reach bet-
ter reading comprehension. This result is consistent with previous findings (Ackerman &
Goldsmith, 2012) showing that readers who read expository text in print have better meta-
cognition (e.g., self-regulated study time, prediction of performance) than those who read
on digital media. Another possible explanation is that undergraduate readers are socio-
historically and culturally informed and may still prefer reading long academic articles in
print rather than on digital media (Foasberg, 2014; Gao & Isaia, 2017). They might think
that since they were handed a printed document, they must study it closely because that
is what people usually do with printed articles, especially with scientific expository texts.
A detailed analysis of eye movement data on specific areas of interests (see Figs. 1
and 2) revealed a few interesting findings. Compared with the digital group, the print

13
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 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1563

group fixated longer on the representational diagrams and their statements. It may
indicate that the print group used diagrams more strategically than the digital group
given that the representational diagrams mirror part or all of the text content and have
a cognitive function (Carney & Levin, 2002). The two representational diagrams
included in this study included many scientific concepts; one explained the plate tec-
tonics of coast mountains and continents and the different movement speed and crash
energy of plate tectonics whereas the other explained the internal structure of a sub-
surface equipment and the flow ability of silicone oil. Texts and diagrams have dif-
ferent functions in cognitive processes (Jian & Wu, 2021; Schnotz & Bannert, 2003;
Schnotz et al., 2014), where the text usually serves as a conceptual guide for initial
comprehension (Schnotz & Wagner, 2018), while diagrams are used as a mental scaf-
fold to facilitate mental model construction (Eitel et al., 2013). Therefore, decoding
the information in these diagrams deeply may help readers to comprehend the impor-
tant scientific concepts in the article and may result in better reading comprehension.
This result is also in line with previous studies showing that readers who had better
scores on the reading comprehension test spent more time processing the diagrams
than readers who had poorer test scores (Jian, 2017; Mason et al., 2013).
In addition, the results showed that the readers spend less time examining the
statistics diagrams, and most of that time was spent during the first-pass stage rather
than the rereading stage. Comprehending statistics diagrams is difficult for most
undergraduates (Cooper & Shore, 2008; Glazer, 2011), and the results of this study
indicate that the readers had limited will to review the statistics diagrams, even
though these diagrams contained plenty of important information.
This study had two limitations. The areas of interest used in this study were
already present in the original scientific article and not designed for the study. Thus,
the size and concept density of the diagrams was not equal. Moreover, since the
analysis was exploratory, the interpretation of the results should be treated with cau-
tion. Further research is needed to investigate possible explanations and causes for
the results by controlling the diagram characteristics for each type.
In sum, although the print and digital groups spent about the same amount of
time on processing the article, texts, diagrams, and diagram statements, the time was
not divided evenly between the first-pass and the rereading stage. The digital group
spent much more time reading the article in the first-pass stage, but seldom reread
it. In contrast, the print group first skimmed the article and then went back to check
and carefully reread the important parts of the article. As a result, they exhibited
higher total fixation durations in the rereading stage, and a higher number of reread-
ing instances across pages. To conclude, the above findings indicate that reading
media affects the cognitive strategies employed, and that readers who read in print
show more selective and intentional reading behaviors, likely reflecting self-regula-
tion and metacognition to ensure better comprehension.

Appendix

See Table 3.

13
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 1564

13
Table 3  A scoring example of the reading test
Answers Score

Correct answer Slow earthquakes refer to the earthquakes in which the faults rupture gradually or those that occur over a long time period (1 3
point represents events such as fault rupture and plate collision)
Slow earthquakes take up to several minutes, hours, days, or even weeks to release the accumulated energy (1 point repre-
sents a long time period)
However, they cannot be recorded on seismic instruments (1 point indicates that they cannot be recorded), though their
formation mechanism is similar to that of the ordinary earthquakes
Subject 01 Unlike ordinary earthquakes that release energy rapidly (in a few seconds), slow earthquakes release energy gradually, 1
perhaps in weeks or even months (1 point represents a long time period). Moreover, they do not release large amounts of
energy at once but release the accumulated energy gradually
Subject 02 Slow earthquakes, unlike the commonly occurring earthquakes that last few seconds, have a duration ranging from several 2
minutes to even days (1 point represents a long time period), thereby releasing the pressure of plate collision (1 point
represents events such as fault rupture and plate collision)
Subject 03 Slow earthquakes are distinct from the ordinary earthquakes that are defined by the Central Weather Bureau and can be 3
recorded by at least three detection instruments (1 point indicates that they cannot be recorded); however, like ordinary
earthquakes, they are also caused by plate dislocation (1 point represents plate or stratum changes)
As these earthquakes take longer to form and occur than the ordinary earthquakes, they are designated as slow earthquakes.
Ordinary earthquakes take only a few seconds to occur, while slow earthquakes need several minutes, days, or even weeks
to form the momentum (1 point represents a long time period)

Item: “Please explain what “Slow Earthquake” is? And describe the characteristics of Slow Earthquake”
Y.-C. Jian

Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.

 Reading in print versus digital media uses different cognitive… 1565

Acknowledgements This research was financially supported from the grant MOST 110-2636-H-003-
003- under Young Scholar Fellowship Program by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan,
and the “Institute for Research Excellence in Learning Sciences” and “Higher Education Deep Cultiva-
tion Project” of National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU), sponsored by the Ministry of Education,
Taiwan. I also thank Miss Yi-Jye Wu for collecting the data in this study.

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