Paper Texts versus Electronic Texts in Terms of Reading

Overview

Technology enthusiasts claim that the digital age is coming and no one can stop it. Schools and businesses across the world are switching to use electronic tablets instead of paper. Unfortunately for technology enthusiasts, the digital age may not arrive as quickly as they would like it to. Even more unfortunately for technology enthusiasts, it may be true that they do not really want the digital age to come at all. A hypothesis was formed that if one typical, average human being were to read off paper and off a screen then he or she will find it easier to read off paper than the screen because humans naturally tend to favor paper over screens. Twenty individual human willing volunteers were asked to play two perfectly identical memory games. The first memory game was played on paper. The second memory game was played on an electronic tablet. The results of the experiment were that on average the willing volunteers scored a 6.05 on the paper test. On average the willing volunteers scored a 4.65 on the test on the electronic tablet. The conclusion of this experiment was that humans do indeed tend to naturally favor paper texts, however it should duly be noted that it is only by a relatively minute amount.

Competition history

• ISEF 2015 Biomedical and Health Sciences · Entry BEHA029I

Resources

• ISEF abstract page ↗

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