Pay attention to digital text: The impact of the media on text comprehension and self-monitoring in higher-education students with ADHD.
College students with ADHD understand less and over-rate their skill when they read on screens instead of paper.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Gal et al. asked 60 college students to read the same science text in two ways. Half had ADHD; half did not.
Each student read one page on paper and one page on a tablet. After each page they answered questions and rated how well they thought they did.
What they found
Students with ADHD scored a large share lower on the tablet page than on the paper page.
They also thought they did great on the tablet, even when they failed half the questions. The other students showed smaller drops and better self-checking.
How this fits with other research
Jackson et al. (2025) found that Saudi students with disabilities earn higher grades when they use assistive tech. Their survey hints that tech can help if it is matched to the learner, not just handed out.
Williams-Buttari et al. (2023) used money contracts to cut college phone use by a large share. Their result seems opposite—tech is bad here, good there—but the difference is control: Devin paid students to stay off the phone, while Gal simply swapped paper for screen.
Tarifa-Rodriguez et al. (2024) give us new ways to count social-media clicks in class. Pairing those metrics with Gal’s reading tests could show when screen time starts to hurt learning.
Why it matters
If you teach college students with ADHD, start by checking the format of their readings. Print the first chapter and compare quiz scores. One simple switch can save a semester of guessing.
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Join Free →Hand the student the same short article in print and on screen, run a 5-question quiz after each, and graph the difference to pick the best format.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Higher-education students with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) often face difficulties in self-regulation of learning (SRL). Studies of typical students have shown that SRL is less effective for digitally displayed texts. The current study investigated the influence of the media (digital, print) on reading comprehension and self-monitoring (a component of SRL) in higher-education students with and without ADHD. METHODS: Forty-five students with ADHD and 61 matched controls read an expository text displayed digitally or in print. Then, they predicted their performance score and answered comprehension questions. Sustained attention and set-shifting abilities were also assessed. RESULTS: In the digital condition, students with ADHD had significantly lower comprehension scores and were overconfident in their predictions of success relative to controls. In the print condition, the ADHD group spent more time reading the text, but their predictions of performance and comprehension scores were comparable to those of the control group. Poor sustained attention was significantly correlated with lower comprehension scores in both media conditions, whereas set-shifting correlated only with comprehension of the printed text. CONCLUSIONS: Understanding a digitally displayed text is more challenging for students with ADHD than their peers, particularly when the conditions of the comprehension task favor good SRL skills.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2019 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2019.04.001