Digital reading and what makes it hard for whom: Individual differences in learning from digital texts

Abstract

We introduce a special issue on digital reading that focuses on examining the roles and contributions of reader individual differences in learning from digital texts. In this introduction, we explain how reading of digital texts can be viewed from different angles. A first angle is that of the text, which is often the dichotomized between print (e.g., paper) versus digital (e.g., computer screen). Specific elements of digital texts (e.g., interactivity, hypertextuality, multimodality, uncertainty) pose additional questions. Second is the reader, and individual differences among readers. The third angle regards task variables. Together, these three shape the processing of digital texts, which is the fourth angle in reading digital texts. We argue that the science of reading needs to expand to include the science of digital reading, as not all that is known from paper reading can be transferred one-on-one to digital reading. Digital text with all its opportunities and challenges will presumably stay. And while the forms may change (e.g., social networks or microblogs were not present 15 years ago), the main challenges associated with cognitive and affective processing, namely integration and evaluation, stay the same. We conclude that it is imperative that we systematically advance our knowledge of which individual difference factors make it harder or easier for students to cope with these challenges and benefit from the opportunities, also in light of seeing which might be more (e.g., epistemic beliefs, reading skills and strategies), or less (e.g., working memory capacity) educationally malleable.