Print and digital reading habits and comprehension in children with and without special education needs.
More fun reading on paper and less school reading on screens lifts comprehension for all upper-elementary students, special-education or not.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Vargas et al. (2024) asked fourth- to sixth-grade students how much they read for fun on paper and how much they read for school on screens. They then gave everyone the same reading quiz to see who understood more.
Some kids had special-education plans and some did not. The team checked whether the link between reading habits and scores changed for either group.
What they found
Kids who read more paper books for fun scored higher on the quiz. Kids who did most school reading on screens scored lower.
The pattern was the same for students with and without special-education needs. More print leisure reading helped everyone; more on-screen school reading hurt everyone.
How this fits with other research
Ben-Yehudah et al. (2019) saw the same screen penalty in college students with ADHD. Their drop in understanding was bigger, showing the problem may grow with age or clinical status.
Blom et al. (2017) found no comprehension gap between hypertext and regular digital text in deaf or language-impaired elementary students. Together the two studies hint that the issue is screen time itself, not just how you click around inside a digital page.
Aldakhil et al. (2023) showed that about six percent of third- to sixth-graders have dyslexia. Cristina’s work says you can still boost those students’ understanding by steering them toward print leisure books.
Why it matters
You can act on this today. Add a ten-minute silent reading block with real books to your session. Let the student pick the topic. Trade one digital worksheet for a printed passage when comprehension is the goal. These tiny swaps raised quiz scores for every learner in the study, IEP or not.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Text comprehension is a major obstacle for many Primary school students with special education needs (SEN). Reading episodes bring students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and knowledge, potentially boosting their development of text comprehension skills. AIMS: Our study seeks to understand how reading frequency (leisure and academic) and reading medium (print and digital) contribute to the development of text comprehension during Primary school in students with and without SEN. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: We tested 2289 Spanish students from fourth to sixth grade, from which 212 had an official decision of SEN. Students self-reported their reading frequency (as a measure of their reading habits) and completed a standardized text comprehension test. We employed multiple regression models with a robust maximum likelihood estimator to test associations between reading frequency and comprehension. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Students' comprehension was positively associated with their leisure print reading habits, and negatively associated with their frequency of academic digital reading. Those associations were independent of SEN status. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Results highlight the importance of promoting leisure reading in print to all students, regardless of SEN status. In addition, caution is advised when encouraging Primary school children to use digital texts when the emphasis is on comprehending texts for acquiring knowledge.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2024 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2024.104675