The recent restoration of a magnificent, turn-of-the-century mansion in south Minneapolis included a feature unknown 125 years ago: In almost every room, a large screen TV hung from the wall. Today, these life-sized images invade most homes with an almost endless variety of programming. Yet, many people continue to read books and magazines, whether on a screen or real paper.
If I had to choose one or the other, I would choose printed words instead of images. That bias was reflected in a discussion moment many years ago in a journalism class. On the subject of television news I remarked that compared with print newspapers, books, and magazines, that TV news was primarily entertainment. The gasps of surprise and derision from the aspiring broadcast journalism students in the class caught me off guard. We held our ground as the professor sought some détente.
My defense of reading as a superior form of transmitting information and knowledge comes from my academic learning. A distinction between reading and viewing may be that one is ‘high’ involvement and the other ‘low’ involvement. When your brain is processing (decoding) squiggles on paper forming letters and words, it requires greater involvement to translate them into meaning, or high involvement.
Seeing images or listening to a TV news reader requires less mental energy, as long as you can understand the language, thus, low involvement. You don’t have to really concentrate your brain on understanding a TV news cast. Also, there is much less content. The word counts are far lower compared with a typical print story.
According to research at a university in Australia, “comprehension tends to be less effective when reading on screens than on paper, particularly with texts that require a deeper understanding or when reading under time pressure.” (Search: Dynamic reading in a digital age: New insights on cognition). Another source of my reading bias could stem from not having a TV at home until I was 11-years-old.
If the stand-off favors print for storing and transmitting large amounts of information, there is more to communication than just facts. In face-to-face interaction it has been said that as much as 70 percent is non-verbal. Perhaps the on-air performance of a TV newscaster or announcer contributes to your understanding of the message. There is emotion and connection with another human being. Movies, television dramas, or YouTube videos appeal to emotions. And emotions often have the greatest influence on human behavior.
That’s not to say that printed words can’t elicit emotion. A sensitive subject artfully portrayed in words can do that very well, whether fiction or non-fiction. In a Harvard Business Review article, Christine Seifert states: “Reading fiction predicts increased social acuity and a sharper ability to comprehend other people’s motivations.” And “Reading literary fiction enhances the brain’s ability to keep an open mind while processing information.”
Another aspect of the images-words question arises when you consider history. According to scholars, language and cave paintings go back 100,000 years or more. Imagine looking at a cave painting created by some early human. You are interacting, trying to interpret their thoughts and feelings through images and not words. Sumerians are credited with creating writing more than 3,000 years BCE, or about 5,000 years ago.
This may be a bit of a stretch, but could we say that in today’s digital world have we come full circle? A hundred thousand or more years ago, humans interacted with some form of language face-to-face, leaving cave paintings expressing facts and emotions. Along with more advanced language came math and science – more objective and cerebral up through the mid-20th century, with a primary reliance on the written word. Then came the digital world, with unlimited, virtual, often face-to-face interpersonal communication.
If we can rein in the dark side of the digital world, maybe we can have the best of both. Instant, efficient transmission of information, including emotions, yet retain the printed word with its far greater capacity for facts and detail necessary for meaningful and in depth communication.
While I find my Kindle reader convenient to use, and appreciate watching some television-movie-YouTube content, I still prefer holding a book or magazine. Artful graphics and typography, turning back and forth among pages, looking away from time to time ruminating on a passage. The lack of immediate emotional appeal of the visual is equaled if not surpassed by understanding that as you are reading, your brain is connecting to that of the author at the time it was being written. That certainly qualifies as high involvement.
Photo: Paintings in Lascaux caves in southwestern France.
