Syntes: Ronconi, Altoè & Mason (2025) — ink and pixels (grade 7 paper vs screen)

Källa: Ronconi, A., Altoè, G., & Mason, L. (2025). Ink and pixels: Impact of highlighting and reading self-efficacy on adolescents' cognitive load, epistemic emotions, and text comprehension. Learning and Individual Differences, 117, 102604. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2024.102604

Metadata

• ID: MEDIA-014
• Tier: RCT (mixed: medium within; highlighting between)
• N / design: N=191 Italian seventh graders (M=12.42); two ~1000-word informational science texts (earthquakes / volcanoes); paper vs desktop PC (Adobe Reader PDF, 21-in monitors) with scrolling; half highlighted, half read only; immediate literal and inferential MC comprehension
• Population: grundskola-hog / lower secondary
• Subject: medium effect on comprehension, cognitive load, epistemic emotions; highlighting and reading self-efficacy as moderators

Finding

1. No significant main effect of reading medium on literal or inferential comprehension (authors: "results did not support a screen inferiority effect, indicating similar comprehension performance across media").
2. Digital reading associated with lower perceived cognitive load than paper (b = −1.90, 95% CI [−3.06, −0.74], p = .001).
3. Highlighting × medium interaction on literal scores (b = −1.84, p = .013) but pairwise simple effects ns; no medium main effect on inferential comprehension.
4. Calibration / overestimation of comprehension not measured.

Mechanism

School-age familiarity with digital study tools may reduce the medium gap for lengthy informational texts under classroom conditions; cognitive load lower on screen while comprehension holds.

Limits

Immediate test only (no delayed comprehension); earthquake inferential items lower reliability (ω = 0.61); schools with mostly paper-based teaching; calibration not assessed; scrolling amount hard to equate because students could zoom.

This claim dies if …

A meta/RCT beyond early primary finds screen ≥ paper for deep comprehension of continuous text under equal time and the calibration gap disappears.

Swedish implication

Measure school-age informational reading on screen with delayed and calibration outcomes; do not treat grade-7 nulls as erasing the university / time-limited paper average.

Links

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2024.102604
• Related: foss-stole-magyari-2026-vet-paper-screen, florit-etal-2025-first-grade-paper-screen, delgado-etal-2018-paper-vs-screen, clinton-2019-paper-vs-screens