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"Beyond treating individual letters as physical objects, the human brain may also perceive a text in its entirety as a kind of physical landscape. When we read, we construct a mental representation of the text in which meaning is anchored to structure. The exact nature of such representations remains unclear, but they are likely similar to the mental maps we create of terrain—such as mountains and trails—and of man-made physical spaces, such as apartments and offices.
I do agree that in some applications, reading from an actual book is important to be able to backtrack to a previous page. For myself, when studying a play script, I can actually envision the page - left or right - where the dialog appeared and I find it far easier to retain the speech.
However, the fallacy is in the statement that the brain prefers to read on paper. I was given an original script, typed on standard size sheets - 8 1/2 x 11 inches - and the effort to learn my own speeches, never mind the speeches from which I received my cues, was incredibly difficult by comparison.
From this, I conclude that it is not simply the act of reading on paper, but the construct of the printing that matters, i.e., recto and verso.
It might just be a very ephemeral preference that has barely lingered through a generation. The first non-paper reading took place on heavy computer monitors, that required sitting in an uncomfortable chair with a fixed posture in order to read a lengthy document that can more easily be enjoyed in one's lap in an easy chair. So over the space of a decade or two, people acquired a personal preference to read paper over monitor. This preference might go away, with the universality (not yet attained, by the way) of electronic screen reading that enables the reader to retire to an easy chair.
"In most cases, paper books have more obvious topography than onscreen text. An open paperback presents a reader with two clearly defined domains—the left and right pages—and a total of eight corners with which to orient oneself. A reader can focus on a single page of a paper book without losing sight of the whole text: one can see where the book begins and ends and where one page is in relation to those borders. One can even feel the thickness of the pages read in one hand and pages to be read in the other. Turning the pages of a paper book is like leaving one footprint after another on the trail—there's a rhythm to it and a visible record of how far one has traveled. All these features not only make text in a paper book easily navigable, they also make it easier to form a coherent mental map of the text."
Agreed completely. When I try to recall information from a book I find myself frequently recalling the physical feel of the page, specifically flipping to and from the page, and the way the letters look on the page.
Maybe I'm unusual but I've always preferred reading on an LCD screen over paper. I did not like the CRT displays though because the edges always seemed a little blurry. But I will take a high resolution screen over any paper medium. Paper books always seem to want to close up so you're always having to hold the pages apart. I like having my hands free and reading on a laptop or kindle. You also have to use bookmarks that get lost to hold your place. And newspapers? I have bad memories of them getting ink everywhere. After you're done with them, they pile up. Much happier reading stuff on a high res display.
I agree about the paper thing. When I produce documents at work, my final proof read is on paper. It is amazing how many mistakes (minor) I catch on paper that I did not see on the monitor.
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