Studying Online;Succeeding through Distance Learning at University

48 Studying online 
energy used. Tese people “subvocalise”. Tey are almost reading 
out loud, but not quite. Sometimes you can see their lips move as 
they read. Research at the University of Massachusetts established 
over 40 years ago that subvocalisation can improve comprehen-
sion (Slowiaczek and Clifton, 1980). Indeed, educationalists sug-
gested this technique back in the 1940s to help children read 
better (Buswell, 1947). However, even though it helps children 
learn to read, it adds to the efort of reading. Is it any wonder that 
you get tired reading with the visual centre of your brain work-
ing on the text, your phonological loop activated, and sometimes 
subvocalising the text? Tat is a lot of cognitive activity which can 
make you tired. For online studying, though, there is the addition-
al complication of reading on screen. 
 
 ON-SCREEN READING 
IS EXTRA TIRING 
Reading from a screen is not the same as reading from a printed 
page. Several diferences impact how well you can read the text 
and how much you comprehend or remember. When you are 
reading from a printed book or document, the light reaching your 
eyes is scattered. Tere are several beams of light refecting from 
the page in various directions. Your eyes are getting this refected 
light which is how you usually see things. However, screens proj-
ect light directly into your eyeballs. Te light is not scattered but is 
efectively injected into your eyes. Tat is not how your eyes were 
designed to receive light. Didn’t your Mum tell you not to look 
directly at the sun? To cope with the light that is fooding into your 
eyes, they have to work harder than they would if you were read-
ing from a printed book. As you will discover in Chapter 11, this 
can lead to something called Computer Vision Syndrome, a clini-
cal diagnosis for people sufering problems resulting from sitting 
at screens for long periods. Reading online is tiring and can cause 
health problems. We also appear to make it even more difcult 
for ourselves because the way we read online difers from how we 
read printed materials. Rather than reading the text logically, we 

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