Digital media may be changing how you think

Public Release: 8-May-2016
Digital media may be changing how you think
New study finds users focus on concrete details rather than the big picture
Dartmouth College

Tablet and laptop users beware. Using digital platforms such as tablets and laptops for reading may make you more inclined to focus on concrete details rather than interpreting information more abstractly, according to a new study published in the proceedings of ACM CHI '16, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, to be held May 7-12, 2016. The findings serve as another wake-up call to how digital media may be affecting our likelihood of using abstract thought.

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the research tried to hold as many factors as possible constant between the digital and non-digital platforms. Reading material and other content for the study for example, was published using the same print size and format in both the digital and non-digital (print) versions.

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