Today, it is impossible to escape the grip that technology commands on our society, and people are finding more ways of practice in which this technology can improve life involving our productivity and performance. With understanding that technology’s influence can have both positive and negative effects on the world in which we live, it is important to maintain fundamental opinions in what areas technology has benefited our society and those in which it has inevitably harmed.
One such inquiry investigates the use of audiobooks in comparison to reading a novel through print. To many readers and booklovers alike, audiobooks have presented a significant question relating to audiobooks as a lesser form of art and if they aid an individual in cognitive growth as much as a book read in standard print.
Frequently discussed among scholars and other individuals interested in these questions, research has deduced that while it may seem as if different processes and other mental factors are being used to read a book in print in comparison to listening to its contents over an audio book. Both basically entail the same amount of brain processing and requirement for the interpretation of information.
Now, it is true that the process of decoding information is in greater ways achieved from reading books in print. However, one does not lose the essence of what it means to read and understand a text while listening to an audiobook. It would be nonsense to state that all people listening and maintaining a knowledge of a story from audiobooks are cheating in the way they encounter a text.
Truly, there really is no cheating when it comes to learning information. While different parts of our brain may be used to understand and interpret the information of an audiobook versus a book in print, both reap the same benefits in terms of mental growth for the interpreter of the information.
Of course, considering the evidence revealing that audiobooks are not cheating or slighting oneself of knowledge, I still find that the quality of physically holding a book in hand while going through the journey to amass and interpret its information is a beautiful quality. At times, I still wonder if audiobooks perhaps take away from what the original author desires for you to experience through their creation. The age of technology poses many difficult questions to answer even with research to prove its reliability and benefits.
