Edited by: Jonathan Schooler, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
Reviewed by: Peter Dixon, University of Alberta, Canada; Michael J. Kane, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA; James M. Broadway, University of California Santa Barbara, USA; Benjamin Baird, University of California Santa Barbara, USA
*Correspondence: Daniel Smilek, Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada e-mail:
This article was submitted to Perception Science, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
We examined whether different encounters of reading material influence the likelihood of mind wandering, memory for the material, and the ratings of interest in the material. In a within-subjects design participants experienced three different reading encounters: (1) reading a passage aloud, (2) listening to a passage being read to them, and (3) reading a passage silently. Throughout each reading encounter probes were given in order to identify mind wandering. After finishing the passage participants also rated how interesting it was and completed a content recognition test. Results showed that reading aloud led to the least amount of mind wandering, while listening to the passage led to the most mind wandering. Listening to the passage was also associated with the poorest memory performance and the least interest in the material. Finally, within the silent reading and listening encounters we observed negative relations between mind wandering and both memory performance and interest in the material, replicating previous findings. Taken together, the present findings improve our understanding of the nature of mind wandering while reading, and have potentially important implications for readers seeking to take advantage of the convenience of audiobooks and podcasts.
We live in an age defined by rapid technological change, and one of the areas in which new technology has affected us most is the electronic distribution of information. While most of us first learned to understand the world outside our homes by reading newspapers, magazines, and books, electronic versions are already rapidly replacing these traditional media—and even those are giving way to newer, more convenient, methods of information consumption, such as podcasts (digital media) and audiobooks (Pierleoni,
While our study was mainly exploratory in nature, we did have some general reasons for comparing mind wandering while silently reading, reading aloud, and listening. Importantly, we included in our comparison an examination of mind wandering during
Taking silent reading as a baseline condition, one of our main goals was to compare rates of mind wandering during silent reading with rates of mind wandering during
Another of our main goals was to directly compare rates of mind wandering across silent reading and
In addition to assessing the rate of mind wandering across conditions, we were interested in studying other potentially relevant outcomes that have been considered in previous research. The most obvious cost likely to be associated with mind wandering is reduced material retention. In previous studies, memory performance has been measured via multiple choice tests following silent reading or viewing and listening to lecture material (Schooler et al.,
In summary, we examined mind wandering, memory performance and interest ratings across three different reading conditions: silent reading, reading aloud, and listening. We used a within-subjects design in which all participants were exposed to 3 separate passages: one read silently, one read aloud, and one listened to. During each encounter participants were presented with mind wandering probes, used to assess differences in frequency of mind wandering. After each encounter of a passage, participants were asked to rate their interest in the passage on a five-point scale, and they were then given a multiple choice comprehension test examining their memory for the material. We also evaluated the robustness of our admittedly exploratory findings by collecting data from two separate samples of participants, and comparing our findings across the samples.
As our study was exploratory in nature, two large independent samples of participants were collected in order to replicate and confirm each of our findings. The two samples were collected across two terms in one academic year and no changes were made between the samples. A total of 235 University of Waterloo students participated in return for course credit (Sample 1: 114; Sample 2: 121). A total of 24 participants (Sample 1: 8 participants; Sample 2: 16) were dropped from further analyses for failure to complete the task as required (i.e., did not read aloud when instructed to, or skipped through reading material and therefore did not receive any probes). No additional participant or data exclusions were made. Student ages ranged from 17 to 31 years (Sample 1:
Stimuli were displayed using an Intel® Atom™ 230 desktop computer, an Intel® Core™ 2 T7200 laptop computer, or an Intel Pentium™ 4 desktop computer with 19 in, 15.3 in, and 19 in displays, respectively. The program was designed using Python 2.6 and Pygame 1.9. When completing the self-reading conditions, whether aloud or silent, participants were presented the passage in black, size 18 Times New Roman font, single-spaced, against a white background slide measuring 1266 × 718 pixels. Participants were presented one page at a time and moved forward to the next page by pressing “n” on the keyboard. When listening to another person read, text stimuli were not displayed and participants were simply asked to keep their eyes focused on a blank white screen while listening. When reading aloud, participants were recorded with a microphone in order to later verify participants had complied with the instructions. The quality of these recordings was sufficient for verifying that participants had read aloud, but did not afford detailed analysis of the recording. No additional manipulations were included in the study.
Three excerpts from Bill Bryson's
During each reading encounter participants were presented with 10 mind-wandering probes. These were displayed via a blue “pop-up” box in the center of the screen which stated “During the moments prior to the probe, were you mind-wandering?” with key-press response options “1 = Yes 0 = No.” These probes were presented on a 30–90 s randomized schedule. Following participant response the blue “pop-up” box displayed the following message “Task will restart in 3 s… ” after which the pop-up box disappeared and participants could resume the task. Although each experimental task was designed to display 10 probes a number of participants in the silent reading condition completed the task sooner than anticipated, due to faster than average reading times. To account for the absence of some probes across participants and conditions, mind-wandering reports are reported as the proportion of instances of mind wandering for the number of probes received
Previous research has shown a negative correlation between mind-wandering reports in silent reading and performance on memory tests related to the material (Schooler et al.,
To both replicate Giambra and Grodsky's (
Participants were brought into the lab and provided information related to the study before providing informed consent. The nature of the task was explained with a definition of mind-wandering provided as: “Any thoughts that are experienced that are not related to the material being presented” [based on Lindquist and McLean (
All analyses were conducted separately for each sample in order to demonstrate the replicability (or lack thereof) of our findings. The average Proportions of Mind Wandering in each Encounter Type, for Samples 1 and 2, are displayed in Figure
The average Memory Test Proportion Correct for each Encounter Type and both Samples are displayed in Figure
The average Interest Ratings in each Encounter Type, for Samples 1 and 2, are displayed in Figure
Our study design also allowed us to examine a number of correlational findings that have previously been reported, as shown in Table
Mind wandering | −0.08 | −0.20 |
0.01 | −0.36 |
Memory | 0.14 | 0.23 |
||
Mind wandering | −0.36 |
−0.43 |
−0.22 |
−0.42 |
Memory | 0.40 |
0.33 |
||
Mind wandering | −0.25 |
−0.51 |
−0.43 |
−0.65 |
Memory | 0.33 |
0.43 |
The present study broadly supports the notion that a more physically engaged reading experience means readers are likely to spend less time mind wandering. In two samples participants reported greater mind wandering when they were simply listening to another individual read, compared to when they engaged in more active forms of information consumption, namely reading silently and aloud. Interestingly, participants also reported less mind wandering when they were reading aloud than when they were reading silently, making reading aloud the most effective at preventing mind wandering. An additional consequence of these different types of engagement was decreased memory performance, such that more passively listening resulted in significantly worse memory for the material than either actively reading aloud or reading silently. In this regard it is interesting that, although reading aloud was able to reduce mind wandering relative to reading silently, there appeared to be no associated cost with respect to memory performance. Similarly, participants' interest in the material also showed no difference between reading silently and aloud, though simply listening, once again, resulted in less interest than when reading aloud.
During the review process we were made aware of a newly published study employing both aloud and silent reading conditions (Franklin et al.,
Despite finding different outcomes from Franklin et al. (
Our findings raise an interesting question, namely: why is it that under typical reading conditions the rate of mind wandering systematically decreases from listening, to silent reading, to reading aloud? We suggest that the key difference between these conditions is the extent to which physical activity is involved in the encounter with the material. Specifically, reading silently requires oculomotor activity that is not involved in listening, and reading aloud involves oculomotor activity
Regardless of the mechanism involved, the present findings certainly show that different types of reading encounters can also entail important differences in mind wandering, memory performance, and interest in the material. These findings have important implications as new technology affords individuals more choices when selecting the methods by which they obtain information (e.g., podcasts, audiobooks, and eBooks), many of which tend to offer a less physically engaging experience. As technological advances continue to broaden our options for information consumption, it is important to recognize the strengths and weaknesses of each new method as it is developed. While listening to an audiobook or podcast may seem to be a convenient and appealing option, our findings suggest that it might be the least beneficial to learning, leading to both higher rates of mind wandering and less interest in the material.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
This research was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grant to Daniel Smilek. The authors thank Sai Kalvapalle and Kris Onderwater for help with data collection.
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1Here we distinguish between “listening” and “hearing,” as in Schnell (
2An analysis of data collected from only the first five probes for each participant and each reading encounter in Sample 1 revealed only nominal differences from analyses that included all recorded probes. Thus, the calculation of proportions was effective in accounting for missing probes, while allowing all available data to be used.