University of Virginia psychology professor Dan Willingham said research that breaks down how people learn to process written language suggests that once people master reading, their comprehension is the same, whether they are absorbing printed or narrated texts.Īnd, in the end, he said, if you’re not studying a text for school or work, when re-reading could help with memorization, what does it matter how you absorb the information? Humanity’s long history of storytelling - which predates written language by tens of thousands of years - supports the argument that our brains originally adapted to absorb long, complex fictions not by eye, but by ear, he said. In a 2012 New Yorker essay, author and journalist John Colapinto added to the debate, noting that the oral tradition may have developed along with human language. He also notes that the first way most people are exposed to language and stories is by being read to as young children. … It’s you and the story, the way the author meant it.” In a 2005 blog post, he said he found that listening to a book can be a very intimate, personal experience. You need the text in front of you.”Īuthors Neil Gaiman and Stephen King have dismissed Bloom as a snob, however, with Gaiman repeatedly voicing his love for the aural experience. You need the whole cognitive process, that part of you which is open to wisdom. Optimal comprehension, he said, “demands the inner ear as well as the outer ear. Literary critic Harold Bloom has proclaimed that audiobooks don’t allow for the “deep reading” that’s needed for learning. Perhaps inevitably, the growing popularity of audiobooks has fanned a debate over whether listening to a book, especially while engaged in such multitasking endeavors as driving or folding the laundry, is inferior to focusing one’s eyes on printed words. “I enjoy reading a book in hand,” she said, “but not as much as I do as escaping with the narrator and letting the author’s thoughts run wild.” In fact, listening while running has become her preferred way to consume literature. Recent favorites include Jeremy Irons reading “Brideshead Revisited” or actor Gary Sinise bringing regional accents and a friendly, folksy tone to John Steinbeck’s first-person account of a trans-America road trip in “Travels with Charley.”Ĭaissie Stephens, a San Jose high school English teacher, says audiobooks enable her to indulge her two passions at once: running and reading. “I might only have 10 minutes at the end of the day, but if that’s all I have for a book, I pretty soon lose track of the threads of the story.”īut the blocks of time on the freeway let her sink into a story. “Lately, I don’t have much concentrated time,” Steele explains. “I used to be able to get through three or four (print) books a week,” says Rose Steele, a theater interior designer who lives in South San Jose and has a “moderately hellish” daily commute to Mountain View.