Processamento leitor na compreensão e retenção de informações em textos acadêmicos e jornalísticos em mídias impressa e digitais

Abstract

There is consensus among scholars that digital technologies have revolutionized teaching, not only because of the amount of information just a click away, but also because of the opportunities they offer for collaboration and interaction for the construction and democratization of knowledge. However, it is not unanimous that digital technologies favor reading comprehension. For decades, digital reading has been scrutinized in an attempt to verify if digital media can be used as valid tools for teaching. We developed our research in order to investigate the levels of understanding and retention of information from academic and journalistic texts read in different digital media and in print, in order to check if there would be significant differences in reading in these media. This research is supported by theoretical studies on reading as an interactive and complex activity (GOODMAN, 1967, 1988; SMITH, 1971; RUMELHART, 1985; CARRELL, 1988). We also discussed the processes involved in reading comprehension (KINTSCH; RAWSON, 2013), approached the role of memory in text processing (CONNOR; RUSSELL, 2016; TOMITCH, 2003), focusing on the representation of text in memory through the propositional analysis of Kintsch and van Dijk (1983) and discussed the strategies used for reading, both cognitive and metacognitive, based on Kleiman (1995) and Mokhtari and Sheorey (2001). Finally, we conducted a systematic review of 61 national and international works, in order to raise the state of the art about text processing in digital media. With this in mind, we conducted a semiexperimental research with 24 participants, proficient in English and experienced in reading, print and digital. The first phase of the research, quantitative, involved reading texts and carrying out comprehension and retention tests, in order to assess how much readers understood and retained information from the texts read, two academic (abstract and introduction of scientific articles) and two journalists (academic news and journalistic news) when read in different digital media (cell phone, tablet and computer) and in print. Statistical tests (ANOVA and t test) did not identify significant differences in comprehension or retention in relation to the text read or the media used for reading. In the second (qualitative) phase of the research, four participants (those who obtained the best results in the tests of the first phase) read four texts in four different media and answered comprehension tests while verbalizing their reasoning for solving the test questions. The transcription and analysis of the Verbal Protocols allowed us to verify which strategies were used in the different media used for reading. We identified the use of reading strategies 377 times in the Protocols; readers used 16 different strategies, 7 metacognitive and 9 cognitive. We did not find differences in the use of the strategies in relation to the type of text read or the media used for reading. Although our research did not reveal that digital reading can hinder – or benefit – comprehension and retention of information when we read academic and journalistic texts, further inquiry is needed so we can achieve conclusive results.