Reading and the embodied mind: How is reading influenced by the non-tangibility of a digital text?

2025/12/11 by Elisabeth M. Ernst, Ernst, Elisabeth M.
Arts and Humanities · #Digital Humanities and Scholarship

paper · pdf · doi:10.60602/1887/3204549

Abstract

With the progression of digitisation, more and more digital reading devices are finding their ways into our daily reading habits.Over the past years, research has shown that, despite all convenience, digital reading seems to be inferior to analogue reading in some cases, especially if we want to achieve deep understanding of a text.This essay takes different aspects of former research into account, unifying them to create an overview of a fact that can be evident to some but is nevertheless all too often disregarded as banal nostalgia for "paper" by blind advocates of all things digital.In the following, the role of bodily perception for the process of reading and the value of tangible tools for our cognitive processes will be examined.Based on that, the superiority of analogue reading, which is often considered a mere preference but can actually be connected to the unique materiality of paper, can be explained.Finally, the spatiotemporal and the imaginary dimension of reading will be analysed in this context, leading to the overall conclusion that the materiality of the reading substrate highly influences our reading process and outcome. Merleau-Ponty and the Theory of Embodied CognitionReading is a complex cognitive process.Given the strength of the association between reading and cognition, the thought of our

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