電子書閱讀較不利於記憶?

這幾天真的是被這篇報導^[1]給疲勞轟炸到不行，但我怎麼看就看不出圖書館外借平板電腦可以引誘學生看書的道理，不曉得有誰可以提供數據來讓大家學習一下。借電子書閱讀器回去相信只能看"書"，但若是 iPad 等平板電腦的話，相信情況就不一樣，是看"書"還是玩 iPad，相信大家心知肚明。

我個人並不反對圖書館出借平板電腦，只是覺得沒有必要為了趕搭熱潮而跟銀子過不去，尤其是經費不充裕的圖書館，最好在實施前先搞清楚目的是什麼，以及如何衡量並驗證實施成果。雖然 Pew Internet 最近的報告^[2]中顯示紙本閱讀仍占多數，但閱讀電子書的人口比例正在逐漸增加，且閱讀電子書的人所閱讀冊數也多出閱讀紙本書的人所閱讀冊數，種種跡象顯示出電子書閱讀的蓬勃發展。

圖片來源：gettyimages.com

不過 TIME.com 在上個月有一篇報導^[3]，文中談到許多人都有一個共同的感覺，就是在閱讀電子書後很難記得起來所閱讀過的內容。英國萊斯特大學講師 Kate Garland 研究指出，讓學生分別以紙本書及電子書來學習相同的內容時，雖然這2組學生的表現沒有明顯差異，但若把時間拉長，紙本書閱讀仍有些細微的優勢。在一項研究中讓心理學科系學生研讀陌生的經濟學，結果有2項發現：

1. 當閱讀工具是電腦時，學生必須重複多次的閱讀才能夠獲得到相同的資訊。
2. 紙本書閱讀似乎較能充分消化資料。

Garland 解釋這就是 “Knowing” 與 “remember” 的不同：

… when you recall something, you either “know” it and it just “comes to you” — without necessarily consciously recalling the context in which you learned it — or you “remember” it by cuing yourself about that context and then arriving at the answer. “Knowing” is better because you can recall the important facts faster and seemingly effortlessly.

電子書閱讀要從 Knowing 到 remember 需要比紙本閱讀花更多的時間：

What we found was that people on paper started to ‘know’ the material more quickly over the passage of time,” says Garland. “It took longer and [required] more repeated testing to get into that knowing state [with the computer reading, but] eventually the people who did it on the computer caught up with the people who [were reading] on paper.

這樣的差別可能來自於人們在記憶上對於空間感的依賴，而電子書所能提供的 spatial landmarks 遠比紙本書少。神經學家 Mark Changizi 說到：

In nature, information comes with a physical address (and often a temporal one), and one can navigate to and from the address. Those raspberry patches we found last year are over the hill and through the woods — and they are still over the hill and through the woods.

And up until the rise of the web, the mechanisms for information storage were largely spatial and could be navigated, thereby tapping into our innate navigation capabilities. Our libraries and books — the real ones, not today’s electronic variety — were supremely navigable.

TIME.com 這篇文章真的很有趣，有興趣的人可以去看完整的原文。不曉得您對電子書閱讀較不利於記憶的看法如何? 我覺得如果透過平板電腦或電腦來閱讀，情況會更糟，因為很容易分心去上網或玩遊戲，所以閱讀的效率可能會打折扣。

延伸閱讀：
1. 聯合報 － 大學圖書館 流行出借平板電腦
2. Pew Internet － The rise of e-reading
3. TIME.com － Do E-Books Make It Harder to Remember What You Just Read?