Screen reading to me is reading on a screen as opposed to a physical book. Not every single textual element on a screen fits within this definition. Screen reading software is not screen reading. But can fit within this definition where the speech can read the text and say the word out loud.
The media elements are very essential to the web-based articles and blogs that we see today. The elements allow us to learn more about the topic that we are reading. Links allow us to expand on the topic using an external source.
Depending on the perspective that is someone views, this it can be a distraction, and it is not a distraction at the same time. The essay says “The researchers measured the effect of video games on what psychologists call “executive attention,” the ability to tune out distractions and pay attention only to relevant information “a person could tune out unnecessary information but if the book is not relevant or interesting, it could pose a problem. A book does not have these elements, so it immersed the reader in just the text that they see in front of them with no supplemental information. All the information should be in the book. In an electronic format, the elements such as hyperlinks act as supplemental information to the reading, whether the information is present. Screen readers do not exist in the physical books, but they get distracted by page numbers and images when they are present, so I would think the screen reader itself could get more distracted than the actual reader in that case. Some people could get lost with the hyperlinks if the supplemental information is too large. So, the reader might want to read the supplemental information, especially if the supplemental information has hyperlinks that continue to supplement the information that they are seeing taking away from the experience of the original work they were reading. So yes, they can if you get too immersed in the content.
My reading habits have changed drastically, as most of my reading is electronic, as I did a little reading in the physical realm. I went from reading the physical text but since the constraints as a university student or a student distract me from actually reading and taking in the content because I am focused on just getting through the reading and not reading the content. I have learned some things that have helped me in reading both mediums as I was not actually engaging with the content fully, whether it was because I did not like the content or because the medium was distracting. After reading a variety of texts, some I needed to work around in order to even read. I learned how to be a better reader. This article was interesting as well because I could relate it to everyday life. The essay says that the study of 8-18-year-old’s “shows that the average time young people spend with media per day is a whopping 6.5 hours—every day of the week, including school days.” I would say that the information is accurate, especially as a college student who looks at screens for 8 hours a day doing readings and typing papers, it is accurate. Not to mention other forms of media consumption per day.
Specific ideas that I have are a brief paragraph supplemental information and not just links to articles, as that should stop the node-based distractions that come from the articles with supplemental information. Audio features allow us to read the book like a podcast. Books that come with notes on the information in note form we don’t need to read the entire book to get the supplemental information, so experts make book notes so that the important information is there.