Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Home › Groups › GIST ›

Hyper Reading - What's harder?

Oak's picture
Submitted by Oak on Fri, 02/25/2011 - 10:19pm

In Hayes' article "How We Read: Close, Hyper, Machine", there is much discussion of two points that seem contradictory to me:

  • subjects of studies have more trouble concentrating on texts with more hyperlinks than texts with fewer hyperlinks
  • the habitual reading of text with hyperlinks degrades a person's ability to concentrate

Shouldn't this be the opposite? If it's harder to concentrate on text with links, and you're reading text with links all the time, shouldn't you get better at concentrating? Is there some mysterious threshold in the human brain that makes it impossible to grow past this? That says "ARG IT'S JUST TOO HARD I QUIT!"? I sincerely doubt it. The human brain is awesome, and makes awesome adaptations.

Groups:
  • share

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
6 + 9 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities

Scanning electron microscope image of SARS-CoV-2

Remote Ready Biology Learning Activities has 50 remote-ready activities, which work for either your classroom or remote teaching.

Narrative is determined not by a desire to narrate but by a desire to exchange. (Roland Barthes, S/Z)

What's New? Subscribe to Serendip Studio

Recent Group Comments