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Is it just me, or eyes react differently to ebooks and real books?

4 points by akabaka777 ↗ HN
I've noticed for a long time that my eyes can never retrace quickly where i was in a eBook if i look away for even a second. Yet for physical books i can do it quickly after relatively long time. Any science behind this?

7 comments

[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 26.9 ms ] thread
marvindanig
Absolutely!

Page turns pace you down and it leads to better attention and retention. Offers retraceability, kind of like a memory palace building exercise.

Also, books are not files. So what we've online isn't truly a piece of software inspired off of books. Ebooks are like those enterprise-y TPS reports that no one wants to read. :-)

yesenadam
[Not science:] Hmm maybe because holding the book in your hands gives you physical coordinates in addition to the visual landmarks. An onscreen ebook is behind glass, removed from all senses but vision. I just watched Bret Victor's Humane Representation of Thought talk yesterday, which is extremely relevant - wanting media (of communication, information work, programming) to involve more of our senses and abilities. Books are a huge advance over PDFs in that way. Touch them, doodle on them, argue back in the margins... Although the smell and sound of a book aren't used to deliver information, if books had no smell or made no sound, they'd be much more like ebooks.
akabaka777
I really enjoyed the talk and it was very relevant thanks. But the speakers vision is almost improbable in my opinion. Not because it's not possible but because the target consumers won't bother for it. Majority of population are already out of touch of their senses with how they use technology. Kinda like how the VR is now marketed, even though the initial ideas blew everyone's minds.
cimmanom
Are you using a backlit screen or e-ink?
akabaka777
backlit screen. I heard of e-ink for the first time from you
cimmanom
Yeah, backlit screens are much harder to read on than paper. I believe there have been studies done on this. E-ink e-readers are awesome for e-books. Very similar to the printed page experience, tho there’s still some work to be done on color and contrast.
akabaka777
"Mangen et al. say that this is because paper gives spatio-temporal markers while you read. Touching paper and turning pages aids the memory, making it easier to remember where you read something. Having to scroll on the computer screen makes remembering more difficult."

https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.236/