Books vs Audio books: Is it always better to read for your brain than to listen?

As an avid reader – and a writer – I am uneven of frequent references to a fall in reading for joy among young people. But when a friend recently asked me if her daughter got the same cognitive benefits of an audiobook that she wanted to read, my instinct was to think “she enjoys a book, the format doesn’t matter”. But as I dug into science, I found that the media shapes the mind in subtly different but meaningful ways.

The benefits of reading

There is no doubt that reading is good for us. In addition to the knowledge it provides and the opportunities it opens, a litany of studies associates good literacy in childhood with physical and mental health – and even longer life.

Reading is believed to exercise important cognitive processes. First, it encourages “deep reading” where we draw connections between sections of the material, reflect on its elevators to our lives and ask exploratory questions about its content – all of which can change our perspective on life itself.

Secondly, reading is cultivating empathy and increasing for emotional intelligence, quality, which is believed to help us tackle stress and other real challenges. And thirdly, there are connections between reading and the development of “theory of mind” – the ability to understand how other people’s thoughts and beliefs differ from ours.

But it can be difficult to remove the effects that the reading has been live from other factors. People who read more can also benefit from privileges such as more leisure, more money or even a genetic disposal to find reading easier, and these can again affect health, cognition or long.

However, a survey of more than 3500 people trying to explain these factors found that those who read for about 30 minutes a day were 20 percent likely to die in the next 12 years than those who did not read at all. They also found that this advantage was greater for those who read books compared to those who read only newspapers or magazines.

Screens, E-Feeders and Audio Books

When it comes to comparing reading in print with other media, such as e-readers, research becomes more complicated. A number of studies suggest reading text on the screen encourages us to foam and therefore understand less than if we read the same text on paper.

There are other subtle differences. In a number of experiment, Anne Manen at the University of Stavanger in Norway and Frank Hakmulder at Utrecht University in the Netherlands found that people who often read shorter, screen -based texts were less likely than book readers to look for meaning. In addition, the more people were the exhibition for screening, the less persistence they turned out to fight with Litory texts.

When it comes to audiobooks, the evidence is thinner, but reassuring – studies generally find understanding are largely the same, whether you are reading or listening to a book. Some subtle differences have still emerged. A meta-analysis of 46 studies, for example, found reading gave a small edge when it came to doing inference about a text-as to interpret a character’s feelings.

Different ways of thinking

In fact, the act of listening rather than reading seems to exploit different elements of our cognition. A study of people that we had spoken or written problems to answer, for example, found individuals who justified more intuitive as they listen to the problem and more consciously when they read it.

Listening to an audiobook also involves hearing another person’s voice, often bringing intonation, rhythm and emotions that can shape its interpretation, says Janet Geipel at the University of Exeter, UK. Reading, on the other hand, binds on our inner voice, which can make the experience more self -pace and personally bent. These different, she says, could potentially influence how we process and use the information.

Nevertheless, “listening to audiobooks is not in itself harmful,” says Geipel. “What can make it harmful is the way attention is controlled: If you are fully focused, listing is as effective as reading, but if you multitasking while listening, your depth of the treatment may be lower than you sit down and read without distraction.”

Choosing what works for you

Listens while Reading adds another dimension. A meta-analysis of Virginia Clinton-Lisell at the University of North Dakota suggests that there may be a small advantage to understand from listing while reading, but this probably affects only people who are struggling to decode words, such as those with lower literacy levels or those who learn to read in another language. Professor readers can experience a negative effect due to “cognitive load theory”, where presentation of information in two formats causes redundancy and risks overwhelmingly overwhelming our limited cognitive resources.

In the end, there are many reasons why you might choose audiobooks over – dyslexia, sign problems, long driving or simple preference. As for where you get the same benefits of doing it? “There is no straightforward answer,” says Geipel.

If you have the choice, it may be a good idea to save a real interest podcast or a book you need to think deeply at a time when you can give it your full attention, rather than when cooking. But if you, like my friend’s daughter, engage in a story of pure pleasure? Using an audiobook seems a much better choice than not experiencing it at all.