The effect of modality on reading comprehension of struggling and typical readers in the second and third grades

Background"Screen inferiority" refers to a well-established phenomenon observed among adults and teenagers, wherein they demonstrate higher reading comprehension when reading from paper compared to screens. However, there is limited research focusing on readers in the initial stages of reading development. The current study aims to investigate reading comprehension in both screen and paper settings, as well as modality preferences, among young typical and struggling readers in the second and third grades.MethodsThe study included 342 second graders and 284 third-grade Hebrew readers. Their reading comprehension performance in both modalities and their preferences for a particular modality were assessed.ResultsThe results suggested no differences in reading comprehension between the two modalities in the second and third grades. The only group that showed numerically higher performance on paper over computer was struggling readers in the second grade. The numeric proportion of modality preferences was higher on the computer rather than on paper.ConclusionsThe current study did not find an effect of modality on reading comprehension in the second and third grades. We did find that children in these grades prefer to read on screens. It is essential to examine the specific characteristics of the digital task to determine when it benefits young readers and when it may be detrimental to them. What is already known about this topic Adults and teenagers show screen inferiority effect. Elementary school children in fourth to sixth grades also present lower reading comprehension on digital reading compared to paper reading. Less is known about first- to third-grade readers in the initial steps of reading acquisition.What this paper adds Second and third graders achieve similar reading comprehension in computer screen reading and paper reading. Second- and third-grade readers show a greater preference for reading texts from screens rather than paper. Struggling readers in the second grade achieved numerically higher reading comprehension in reading from paper compared to screens.Implications for theory, policy or practice Screen reading, with minimal differences in task characteristics compared to paper, does not impede developing readers' reading comprehension. These young readers prefer to read on screens. Designing digital reading tasks should be research-based and refer to the specific characteristics of the readers.