Is listening to an audiobook the same as reading?
Relax: audiobooks aren’t cheating. Cognitive science explains why.
“What have you read lately?”
For an audiobook fan, that question opens a can of worms. Am I allowed to answer with the audiobooks I’ve been listening to? Do I have to say I listened and didn’t read them? Should I just stick to books I sat down and read with my eyes? Why, we ask, is this such a fraught topic?
Maybe the weight of this issue has something to do with the physical presence of books. There’s something about the feeling of accomplishment of turning the last page of a book, especially a big one. (Maybe that’s why everyone who’s read Infinite Jest can’t bear not to talk about it.) The books on our shelves, with cracked spines and worn edges, tell stories of what we know, where we’ve been — and even who we’ve been.
Or maybe it’s got something to do with our experience of schooling and education, where some of us struggled to read (more on that in a bit) while others excelled — and produced the grade-A book reports to prove it. We remember the effort it took to amass a pile of read books, and the positive reinforcement received from parents and teachers. Perhaps the sense of traditional text-based reading as a more legitimate mode of reading is tied to a sense of self we developed through the report cards we took home in childhood that specifically cited our dedication to the printed page.
“The books on our shelves, with cracked spines and worn edges, tell stories of what we know, where we’ve been-and even who we’ve been.”
The first argument, of physicality, has been dangling by a thread for a while. eBooks have been a major part of book sales and library lending for over a decade now, and many readers find themselves rarely turning paper pages or cradling infant-sized hardcover books in their laps when an eBook alternative exists. Even among adherents to physical books, bookshelves are at least partially virtual as we share our latest reads online through things like #booktok and StoryGraph.
The second argument though, of reading as an achievement, needs some unpacking. Why do we make such a big fuss about reading books? Cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham, author of the books The Reading Mind and Raising Kids Who Read, has studied what’s going on in the brain when listening to an audiobook and when reading a book on the page or screen. His findings refer to a model that explains the act of reading as a pair of actions working in tandem: “decoding,” which is figuring out what visual symbols are intended to mean, and “language processing,” which is how we come to understand those meanings. Reading typically uses both of these, while listening to speech uses only language processing.
“The act of reading is a pair of actions working in tandem: “decoding,” which is figuring out what visual symbols are intended to mean, and “language processing,” which is how we come to understand those meanings.”
Language processing is the more fundamental of the two actions. It’s an ability that we all gain as we learn to speak and understand speech, and it comes so easily that few of us can recall spending any effort on this skill. But when we look at the decoding part of reading, that requires deliberate effort — and usually the help of an educational framework — to develop. And it turns out that it’s decoding specifically that challenges readers with dyslexia. While these readers can perform the language processing part of reading like anybody else can, going from visual symbols to meaning takes more effort for dyslexic than non-dyslexic readers. For these readers, audiobooks are a helpful on-ramp into a book that helps them get around decoding difficulty and straight to intuitive language processing. If you’ve ever had a conversation with someone about a favourite book you have in common and then been surprised to learn that they have dyslexia, this is why: you both share an equal capacity for understanding language, even if you differ in which mode you best take language in.
For books that resemble speech, such as most novels or narrative non-fiction like memoirs, there’s no significant difference in cognition between listening and reading. A study by Beth Rogowsky at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania found that reading comprehension of a book (she used Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken) didn’t significantly vary between study subjects who read on a page, screen, listened to an audiobook, or some combination of reading modalities. That is, whether readers had to perform decoding and language processing, or just language processing alone, they were equally able to engage with the content of the book. It’s also worth noting that some information is conveyed better through orality, due to vocal inflections that suggest emotional tone or provide context cues for the meaning of an unfamiliar term.
The written word is just 6000 years old. To put that in perspective, when the pyramids were being built, the invention of written script was more recent to Ancient Egyptians than year 0 is to us now. Contrast that to oral communication, which is estimated to have originated in humans 100,000 years ago. We’ve been speaking — and listening — for eons longer than we’ve been writing and reading. Even great works of literature that sit on our shelves were, when they were new, works of oral performance — such as Homer’s Iliad. So the idea of literature as a written medium is a relatively new innovation. You can imagine clickbait of the ancient world as someone in a town square selling chisels and stone tablets calling out, “Recite epic poems perfectly every time with this one weird trick!”
“For books that resemble speech, such as most novels or narrative non-fiction like memoirs, there’s no significant difference in cognition between listening to and reading.”
So relax. Listen to an audiobook while you go for a run or fold laundry. Enjoy reading when your hands or eyes are busy. Because we’re all different readers with different needs and tastes, it’s up to each of us to learn which types of books work best for us on the page, screen, or out loud. But as readers we’re all the same in one key regard: we know that however we read, we’re glad that we found the time to do it. ◼
Sources:
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244016669550
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/07/31/is-listening-to-a-book-a-cheating
To learn more about the reading brain, check out researcher Maryanne Wolf’s book on the topic:
Using down-to-earth examples and personal anecdotes, a preeminent researcher and literacy lover embarks on a lively journey through the reading brain. Drawing on her vast knowledge of neurology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, and child development, she shows how the brain that read Sumerian cuneiforms on clay tablets is different from the brain that reads images on a computer screen. Just as writing reduced our need for memory, technology is reducing the need for written language — a change sure to have profound consequences for our future. Fascinating and revelatory for anyone interested in the science of the brain, for parents of young children learning to read, and for those who want to know more about dyslexia.
Originally published at https://www.kobo.com on October 26, 2022.
