There is no real difference between listening to a book and reading as the mental processes involved are the same. Studies show that listeners and readers retain about equal understanding of the passages they’ve consumed.There are slight differences between them, one being that it’s really easy for your mind to wander when you’re listening to an audiobook, but some scientists believe it amounts to the same as the involuntary rereading eye movements we do while reading.
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The Difference Between Reading Listening To A Book

“A 1985 study found listening comprehension correlated strongly with reading comprehension — suggesting that those who read books well would listen to them well. In a 1977 study, college students who listened to a short story were able to summarize it with equal accuracy as those who read it.”

Reading regularly involves many regressions, where you reread parts of the text to ascertain a word or syntax.Listening sometimes requires echoic memory which is a brain feature that allows us to remember something we heard without paying attention to it a few seconds after we heard if needed.

Regressions And Echoic Memory

<ul><li>The book might not have been intended to be consumed in such a way and doing so decreases the value obtained from reading it.</li><li>An inertial reaction from our society, especially in schools, where reading a big number of books or certain famous ones was considered an achievement.</li></ul>

Possible Reasons Listening To Books Is Held In Low Regard

Simplifying, two basic processes happen when you read: There is decoding, or translating the strings of letters into words with meaning. And then there is language processing, or comprehension.Decoding is specific to reading but by about late elementary school, decoding becomes so second-nature that it isn’t any additional “work” for your brain. It happens automatically.

The Processes Of The Brain While Reading

As is required of all women in their 30s, I am in a book club. At the first meeting of this group, one poor unsuspecting woman mentioned that she had listened to that month's selection instead of reading it. That, the rest of the group decided together, is definitely cheating.

OLGA KHAZAN

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