Affordances and challenges of digital reading for individuals with different learning profiles

Abstract

The ability to successfully learn using digital media is becoming one of the most important skills for students of the 21st century and requires a range of cognitive and metacognitive skills. Children with learning disabilities, however, often have weaknesses with these skills, and may experience difficulties reading and understanding texts presented digitally. On the other hand, digital texts allow for different supports that may be beneficial for children with learning disabilities. Thus, it is important to examine the influence of digital environments on the reading abilities of individuals with specific learning difficulties. In this chapter, we review both the challenges and affordances of digital environments for individuals with reading difficulties and attention deficits. We then examine the contribution of digital interventions and electronic books to the promotion of literacy skills in these populations. We conclude with a call for more rigorous research to understand the challenges that children with different learning profiles face when learning with digital materials.

Task-oriented reading efficiency: interplay of general cognitive ability, task demands, strategies and reading fluency

“…In this study, we aimed to explicate the relationships between the g-factor and selective reading strategy in explaining accuracy and efficiency in task-oriented reading. Students whose reading and attention skills ranged broadly (Anmarkrud et al, 2018;Ben-Yehudah et al, 2018) were asked to locate and verbally report the answers to easy and difficult questions that contained irrelevant and relevant paragraphs presented on a computer screen while their eye movements were recorded. Note that in the framework of the TRACE model, the present investigation is limited to the subprocess of document model construction.…”

“…Most research has focused on explaining accuracy in task-oriented reading with adult participants (e.g., OECD, 2019;Rouet, 2006;Rouet et al, 2017;Snow, 2002;Vidal-Abarca et al, 2011). However, there is an emerging interest in understanding efficient reading strategies (Soederberg Miller, 2009;León et al, 2019) and in how students' various cognitive skills (e.g., reading fluency) define their processes and outcomes in purposeful reading (for reviews, see Anmarkrud et al, 2018;Ben-Yehudah et al, 2018).…”

Expository multimedia comprehension in E‐learning: Presentation format, verbal ability and working memory capacity

“…Hypertexts or digital texts, in addition, are characterized by non‐linear internal connections via hyperlinks (Shapiro & Niederhauser, 2004). Readers construct the text as they navigate through pages or screens, selecting links, evaluating if and how each piece of information fits the mental model, and integrating information in a coherent model (Amadieu & Salmerón, 2014; Ben‐Yehudah et al, 2018; Salmerón, García, & Vidal‐Abarca, 2018). Studies of digital text comprehension have adopted a scenario‐based approach, where participants solve different tasks in controlled mock Internet environments.…”

“…Comprehension in these scenarios depends, to an extent, on the same abilities and skills as comprehension of printed or static texts (Amadieu & Salmerón, 2014; Ben‐Yehudah et al, 2018; Coiro, 2011; Leu et al, 2015; Naumann & Salmerón, 2016; OECD, 2011; Salmerón, García, & Vidal‐Abarca, 2018). For example, in the large multinational PISA study, the overall correlation between digital and print reading performance was 0.83 (OECD, 2011).…”

Il lettore 'distratto'

“…La comprensione dei testi dinamici digitali dipende in parte dagli stessi fattori che influenzano i testi stampati statici come l'abilità verbale, il vocabolario e le conoscenze pregresse del dominio (Coiro 2011;Leu et al 2016;Naumann e Salmerón 2016), in parte da elementi specifici come ad esempio quelli connessi all'apprendimento multimediale (Clark e Mayer 2016). I lettori devono navigare i diversi nodi di informazione, valutando, selezionando o scartando i contenuti, e integrare informazioni multimediali provenienti da più fonti (Ben-Yehudah et al 2018;. Navigazione, integrazione e valutazione emergono quindi come abilità critiche per la comprensione del testo digitale e online (Naumann e Salmerón 2016;.…”