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Skim reading5/8/2023 ![]() ![]() We’re spending so much time scrolling, bookmarking, pushing, linking, and jumping through text that when we sit down with a great book, our skimming habits interfere with our reading process.įor many people who are accustomed to skim-reading digital content, they are likely to avoid reading anything that appears difficult or hard to understand. With so much online information, our brains form shortcuts to deal with it all- scanning, searching for valuable phrases, scrolling up and down quickly. “Skimming has led to a tendency to go to the sources that seem the simplest, most reduced, most familiar, and least cognitively challenging,” says Maryanne Wolf, author of “Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain In A Digital World.” ![]() We are also losing deep attention and focus. We are getting better at parsing information in digital contexts and losing the benefits of deep reading. Today, technology is changing our brains. Reading involves several brain functions, including visual and auditory processes, phonemic awareness, fluency, comprehension, and more.Īccording to the ongoing research at Haskins Laboratories for the Science of the Spoken and Written Word, reading, unlike watching or listening to media, gives the brain more time to stop, think, process, and imagine the narrative.ĭeep reading (attentive reading, absorbing, understanding and analysing text) expands a reader’s attention span.Ī study published in the Annual Review of Psychology found overlap in brain regions used to comprehend stories and interact with others. Research shows that reading helps with fluid intelligence, comprehension and emotional intelligence. ![]() The quality of your reading has a huge impact on how you think. Read (deeply or skimming) changes our brain’s ability to comprehend, analyse, and evaluate information. Reading actually changes the wiring of the brain. Of course, if I skim an article and find it interesting, switching over to slow comprehensive reading is the next step to find even more valuable information. I skim daily to find relevant ideas that inform my work. It’s a fundamental reading skill for a lot of people who need to find valuable information in the shortest possible time. It’s probably the best way to sift through the insane amount of content produced daily. Skimming becomes the only option when you are bombarded with headlines from hundreds, if not thousands, of news sources. How do you know if this article is actually good and worth your time? When you embrace skimming, the brain builds a system to lower the cognitive load to maximise brain energy.Įvery minute on an article is a minute not spent doing something else, hence the need to find real value in a piece before spending more time reading it. When attention is limited, skimming rules. Reading slowly to comprehend information is not cognitively easy for many people. People are sacrificing the depth and feeling and cut off from other people.”ĭeep reading takes time. We have now a generation of people who spend many hours in front of a computer monitor or a cell phone and who are so busy in processing the information received from all directions, so they lose the ability to think and feel. American psychiatrist Edward Hallowell, explains, “never in human history, our brains had to work so much information as today.
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