Psychologists and health professionals have studied the difference between those people who read books and those who don’t ever since psychology was ‘invented’. The results in many ways are not surprising, but we also have to consider any bias in the analysis – given that psychologists and health professionals are people who read a vast number of books themselves in order to reach their professional level of expertise. Of course their findings will confirm that book readers are more intelligent, better adjusted, have greater awareness etc. A summary of an article on this subject from an American not-for-profit health organisation conveys this thought:
Cognitive health: Reading enhances your critical thinking skills and creativity. It also broadens your vocabulary, boosts your knowledge and stimulates your imagination. https://www.nuvancehealth.org/health-tips-and-news/physical-and-mental-health-benefits-of-reading-books
(So far in my research I haven’t read anything to the contrary).
But what of the empirical evidence?
Elon Musk read ten hours per day as a child, and is quoted as saying that he learned to build rockets by “reading books”.
Bill Gates reads nearly a book every week, mostly non-fiction.
Jeff Bezos is known to be a voracious reader who recommends books to executives.
Mark Zuckerberg Committed himself to reading a new book every two weeks.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821): The French emperor was a voracious reader who carried a portable library with him on military campaigns
Michael Jackson (1958–2009): He was a prolific, self-taught reader who owned over 10,000 books, with a particular interest in classic literature, poetry, and philosophy, often reading multiple books in a day.
There are many more famous people who could be added to the list, but this will suffice to establish a point.
A search on Google AI has this to say:
Scientific evidence from psychology, neuroscience, and education supports the notion that book readers, particularly those who engage in deep or narrative reading, develop superior critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and empathy skills. Regular reading strengthens cognitive processes, improves memory retention, and enhances the ability to analyse complex scenarios.
But There’s a Catch!
Not only is it important to read, but it is vitally important what we read. With the emergence of Artificial Technology, there has also emerged what is known as AI Slop. This is a genre of low-quality, high-volume digital content (text, images, video) generated by AI that lacks human effort, meaning, or care. It is the type of content that is flooding the social media with “clickbait” and other forms of meaningless spam.
Reading AI Slop should never be confused with reading a book or novel written by human intelligence, rather than the artificial kind of “intelligence”. Reading books and novels created through human creativity has a positive impact on the soul (depending on the content) whereas the AI Slop has a detrimental impact on the mind of the reader.
From correspondence on AI Slop recorded in Reddit:
Something you should consider is that reading AI slop is different from reading a ‘real’ human-authored book. AI is simply making a statistical average of every book it has in its training data. Using AI chatbots is linked to decrease in critical thinking; in contrast reading human made books builds your vocabulary, slows cognitive decline and strengthens grey matter in your brain. https://www.healthline.com/health/benefits-of-reading-books
In other words, reading actual human-made books – on screen or on print – is beneficial, while all evidence points towards the fact that AI slopfiction might be doing exact opposite. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1kjwyct/is_there_a_psychological_or_biological_difference/
eBook v. Paper Book
One might think that they are relatively the same thing and both people will retain the same knowledge from it, but that’s not really the case.
An extract from a study entitled “A comparison of the influence of electronic books and paper books on reading comprehension, eye fatigue, and perception” by Hanho Jeong of the Department of Education, Chongshin University, Seoul, South Korea, states that:
Cushman (1986) found that visual fatigue is significantly higher when reading texts on a screen than on paper.
In the current stage of technological development, the display of text on computer
screens has been found to have a negative impact on surface legibility (Dillon, 1994).
Texts and documents on screen have a lower surface legibility than printed documents.
Macedo-Rouet et al. (2003) noted that students felt much more tired when reading on
screen; this may be because of the display contrast and resolution of an e-book. Kang
et al. (2009) conducted an experiment to measure students’ eye fatigue and found that
reading a p-book caused less eye fatigue than reading an e-book. In their study, the
authors concluded that the eye fatigue from an e-book was due mainly to the low
display contrast and resolution of the on-screen text.
But the comparison doesn’t end there.
In a study with two groups: Group A was given a story to read in a print book, Group B was given that same story but they made the book more “informative” with hyperlinks on certain words, sources for certain pieces of information with their own hyperlinks, etc.
They found that when it came to retelling the story, that although there were more resources in Group B to help the subjects understand certain words and contexts, they could hardly recall what they read, while Group A was fine.
The theory behind it was that by riddling the text with hyperlinks, distractions are created that break the focus that one needs in order to properly and linearly read through a book to absorb it.
In Conclusion:
From the material that I have read on this subject, there appears to be a 60-40 divide on the preference that university students have when reading paper books compared with electronic format books with 60% of students preferring the paper book.
The reason for the paper preference amongst students came down to the ability to do markups/notes/sketches in the margins of a book plus the ease of being able to find “things” more easily by flipping back and forth through the pages (including their jottings).
There will be those who have an entirely different preference towards the eBook version (hyperlinks being just one of them), but whatever the case – reading something that is Edifying, Encouraging, Enlightening or just plain old Entertaining will result in seeds sown with ‘dividends’ to be reaped in the rewards of a well-lived life.
