by Tom Chatfeld Cass 譯

為何傳統(tǒng)紙質(zhì)閱讀和寫作更有益于大腦

Why Reading and Writing on Paper Can Be Better for Your Brain

by Tom Chatfeld Cass 譯

網(wǎng)絡(luò)媒體雖然比傳統(tǒng)語言文字、印刷媒體更直觀、逼真、吸引力更強(qiáng)，能夠滿足人們追求感官刺激的需求，但卻無法滿足人類追求理性思辨、心靈感悟的精神需求。正是在書本的閱讀中，人們以自己的視角理解一種思想或?qū)徱曇粋€(gè)形象，進(jìn)行心靈的內(nèi)省并與作品進(jìn)行情感交流，大腦也因此得到更多刺激和鍛煉。

S ome tests show that reading from a hard copy allows better concentration, while taking longhand notes versus typing onto laptops increases conceptual understanding and1)retention.

My son is 18 months old, and I’ve been reading books with him since he was born. I say “reading”, but I really mean “l(fā)ooking at”—not to mention grasping, dropping, throwing,2)cuddling, chewing, and everything else a tiny human being likes to do. Over the last six months, though, he has begun not simply to look but also to recognise a few letters and numbers. He calls a capital Y a “yak” after a picture on the door of his room; a capital H is “hedgehog”; a capital K, “kangaroo”; and so on.

一些測(cè)試表明紙質(zhì)閱讀有利于讀者更好地集中精神，與使用筆記本電腦輸入筆記相比，手寫筆記更能增進(jìn)人們對(duì)概念的理解和記憶。

我兒子現(xiàn)在十八個(gè)月大，自他出生以來，我便一直和他一起閱讀。雖然我說“閱讀”，但我指的是盯著書“看”——還有用手抓、丟、扔、抱、咬，和其他所有一切一個(gè)幼小生命喜歡做的事情。然而，在過去的半年里，他不再僅僅是盯著書看，還開始認(rèn)得一些字母和數(shù)字。他看到房間門上的一幅圖，就把圖里大寫的“Y”認(rèn)作“yak（牦牛）”；把大寫的“H”認(rèn)作“hedgehog（刺猬）”；大寫的“K”則是“kangaroo（袋鼠）”；諸如此類。

1) retention [r?'ten?(?)n] n. 記憶力

2) cuddle ['k?d(?)l] v. 擁抱, 摟抱

Reading, unlike speaking, is a young activity in evolutionary terms. Humans have been speaking in some form for hundreds of thousands of years; we are born with the ability to acquire speech etched into our3)neurones. The earliest writing, however, emerged only 6,000 years ago, and every act of reading remains a version of what my son is learning: identifying the special species of physical objects known as letters and words, using much the same neural circuits as we use to identify trees, cars, animals and telephone boxes.

It’s not only words and letters that we process as objects. Texts themselves, so far as our brains are concerned, are physical landscapes. So it shouldn’t be surprising that we respond differently to words printed on a page compared to words appearing on a screen; or that the key to understanding these differences lies in the geography of words in the world.

For her new book, Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World, linguistics professor Naomi Baron conducted a survey of reading preferences among over 300 university students across the U.S., Japan, Slovakia and Germany. When given a choice between media ranging from printouts to smartphones, laptops, e-readers and desktops, 92% of respondents replied that it was hard copy that best allowed them to concentrate.

從進(jìn)化的角度講，閱讀與說話不同，是一種歷史相對(duì)較短的活動(dòng)。成千上萬年以來，人類一直以某種形式說話；我們具有與生俱來銘刻在神經(jīng)元中的說話能力。而最早的寫作(距今僅有六千年)和閱讀的每一個(gè)行為，仍然是我兒子學(xué)習(xí)的模板：識(shí)別字母和單詞構(gòu)成的這特殊實(shí)體種類，使用的神經(jīng)環(huán)路幾乎和我們識(shí)別樹木、汽車、動(dòng)物和電話亭是一樣的。

我們的大腦像處理實(shí)物一樣處理單詞和字母，但這并不局限于單詞和字母。文本本身對(duì)于我們的大腦而言，也是一種物理景觀。因此，相較于屏幕上的文字，我們對(duì)于印刷在紙張上的文字的反應(yīng)有所不同，這并不令人意外；理解這些差異的關(guān)鍵在于文字在世界上的結(jié)構(gòu)特征。

在語言學(xué)教授內(nèi)奧米·巴倫的新書《屏幕上的文字：數(shù)字世界里閱讀的命運(yùn)》中，她針對(duì)來自美國、日本、斯洛伐克和德國的300多名大學(xué)生，開展了閱讀偏好的調(diào)查。面對(duì)各種媒體選擇：從紙質(zhì)版文本到智能手機(jī)、筆記本電腦、電子閱讀器和臺(tái)式機(jī)，92%受訪學(xué)生的回答是：紙質(zhì)版文本最有利于他們集中精神。

3) neurone ['nj??r??n] n. 神經(jīng)細(xì)胞, 神經(jīng)元

4) exclamation [ekskl?'me??(?)n] n. 感嘆號(hào), 驚嘆號(hào)

5) hew [hju?] v. 開辟，開采

6) verbatim [vз?'be?t?m] adv. 逐字地

This isn’t a result likely to surprise many editors, or anyone else who works closely with text. While writing this article, I gathered my thoughts through a version of the same principle: having collated my notes onscreen, I printed said notes, scribbled all over the resulting printout, argued with myself in the margins, placed4)exclamation marks next to key points, spread out the scrawled result—and from this landscape5)hewed a (hopefully) coherent argument.

What exactly was going on here? Age and habit played their part. But there is also a growing scientifc recognition that many of a screen’s unrivalled assets—search, boundless and bottomless capacity, links and leaps and seamless navigation—are either unhelpful or downright destructive when it comes to certain kinds of reading and writing.

Across three experiments in 2013, researchers Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer compared the effectiveness of students taking longhand notes versus typing onto laptops. Their conclusion: the relative slowness of writing by hand demands heavier “mental lifting”, forcing students to summarise rather than to quote6)verbatim—in turn tending to increase conceptual understanding, application and retention.

這個(gè)調(diào)查結(jié)果對(duì)于許多編輯來說并不驚奇，對(duì)其他需要經(jīng)常與文本打交道的人亦然。寫這篇文章時(shí)，我以同樣的原則來整理自己的思路：在網(wǎng)上搜集資料，然后打印出來，在打印稿上涂涂寫寫，在空白處寫下對(duì)自己觀點(diǎn)的質(zhì)疑，在關(guān)鍵的觀點(diǎn)旁邊打上感嘆號(hào)，在紙張上潦草地寫滿想法——希望從這樣的打印稿上能夠開辟出一個(gè)清晰的論點(diǎn)。

究竟是怎么一回事呢？年齡和習(xí)慣是一部分原因。但是同時(shí)也有越來越多的科學(xué)依據(jù)顯示，在談到某些類型的閱讀和寫作時(shí)，屏幕擁有獨(dú)一無二的有利條件——搜索、無限而深不可測(cè)的潛力、鏈接、跨越和無縫導(dǎo)航，但對(duì)于某類閱讀和寫作而言，這些都毫無益處甚至具有破壞性。

在2013年的三個(gè)實(shí)驗(yàn)中，研究人員帕姆·米勒和丹尼爾·奧本海默對(duì)學(xué)生做普通手寫筆記和使用電腦做筆記的有效性進(jìn)行對(duì)比。他們得到的結(jié)論是：手寫筆記這個(gè)相對(duì)緩慢的過程更注重“精神提升”，促使學(xué)生學(xué)會(huì)總結(jié)，而不是一味逐字照抄——從而有利于學(xué)生對(duì)概念的理解，應(yīng)用和記憶儲(chǔ)存。

In other words, friction is good—at least so far as the remembering brain is concerned. Moreover, the textured variety of physical writing can itself be significant. In a 2012 study at Indiana University, psychologist Karin James tested five-year-old children who did not yet know how to read or write by asking them to reproduce a letter or shape in one of three ways: typed onto a computer, drawn onto a blank sheet, or traced over a dotted outline. When the children were drawing freehand, an7)MRI scan during the test showed activation across areas of the brain associated in adults with reading and writing. The other two methods showed no such activation.

Similar effects have been found in other tests, suggesting not only a close link between reading and writing, but that the experience of reading itself differs between letters learned through handwriting and letters learned through typing. Add to this the help that the physical geography of a printed page or the heft of a book can provide to memory, and you’ve got a conclusion neatly matching our embodied natures: the varied, demanding, motor-skill-activating physicality of objects tends to light up our brains brighter than the placeless, weightless scrolling of words on screens.

In many ways, this is an unfair result, effectively comparing print at its best to digital at its worst. Spreading my scrawled-upon printouts across a desk, I’m not just accessing data; I’m reviewing the8)idiosyncratic geography of something I created, carried and adorned. But I researched my piece online, I’m going to type it up onscreen, and my readers will enjoy an onscreen environment expressly designed to gift resonance: a geography, a context. Screens are at their worst when they9)ape and mourn paper. At their best, they’re something free to engage and activate our wondering minds in ways undreamt of a century ago.

換言之，紙質(zhì)閱讀大有裨益——至少在大腦記憶這方面如此。此外，多種多樣獨(dú)特的手寫字體本身就意義深重。在2012年印第安納大學(xué)的一項(xiàng)研究中，心理學(xué)家卡琳·詹姆斯對(duì)還不會(huì)閱讀和書寫的五歲兒童進(jìn)行了測(cè)試，讓他們以三種方式之一再現(xiàn)一個(gè)字母或圖形：使用電腦輸入，在空白紙張上涂畫，或者是沿著虛線輪廓臨摹。核磁共振掃描顯示，在測(cè)試過程中，當(dāng)孩子們徒手畫畫時(shí)，他們大腦活躍的區(qū)域與成年人在閱讀和寫作時(shí)的一樣。而當(dāng)孩子們采取其他兩種方式時(shí)，大腦并沒有顯示出這樣的活躍狀態(tài)。

在其他的測(cè)試中也得出了相似的結(jié)果，這不僅體現(xiàn)了閱讀和寫作之間緊密的聯(lián)系，同時(shí)表明了閱讀手寫的文字和電腦輸入的文字的體驗(yàn)大不相同。再者，打印出來的紙張其物理刺激特征和書本的重量均有利于大腦記憶，所得的結(jié)論完全與我們的本性一致：多樣化的、耗費(fèi)心神的、需要運(yùn)動(dòng)技能激活的實(shí)物，相對(duì)于無物理空間特征、沒有重量的屏幕文字，更有利于激活我們的大腦。

在許多方面，這并不是一個(gè)公平的結(jié)果，實(shí)際上是用打印稿最大的優(yōu)點(diǎn)和電子圖書最差的方面進(jìn)行比較。通過在桌子上攤開我潦草涂寫的打印稿，我獲得的不僅僅是數(shù)據(jù)；我在回顧自己創(chuàng)造的、抄寫過來的或者涂飾過的某些東西的獨(dú)特物理特征。但是我也在網(wǎng)上研究自己的寫作，我也會(huì)把它輸入電腦，使我的讀者們能夠享受顯然是為了產(chǎn)生共鳴而設(shè)計(jì)的網(wǎng)絡(luò)環(huán)境：一個(gè)環(huán)境、情境。屏幕最差勁的方面表現(xiàn)在其模仿紙張或是悼念紙張。而屏幕最大的好處是可以免費(fèi)獲取信息，它以一個(gè)世紀(jì)前人們意想不到的方式激活我們好奇的大腦。

7) MRI abbr. magnetic resonance imaging 核磁共振成像

8) idiosyncratic [,?d??s??'kr?t?k] adj. 特殊物質(zhì)的, 特殊的, 異質(zhì)的

9) ape [e?p] v. 模仿

Above all, it seems to me, we must abandon the notion that there is only one way of reading, or that technology and paper are engaged in some implacable war. We’re lucky enough to have both growing self-knowledge and an opportunity to make our options as fit for purpose as possible—as slippery and searchable or slow with friction as the occasion demands.

I can’t imagine teaching my son to read in a house without any physical books, pens or paper. But I can’t imagine denying him the limitless words and worlds a screen can bring to him either. I hope I can help him learn to make the most of both—and to type/copy/paste/sketch/scribble precisely as much as he needs to make each idea his own.

在我看來，最重要的是，我們必須摒棄閱讀只有一種方式的思想，或者是科技和紙張正陷于殘酷的戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)中這樣的概念。我們很幸運(yùn)擁有日益增長(zhǎng)的自我認(rèn)知，選擇適用自身需求的機(jī)會(huì)也更多了——根據(jù)不同的需求選擇屏幕閱讀或者紙張閱讀。

我無法想象在一座沒有紙質(zhì)書籍或者是紙筆的房子里教我兒子閱讀。我也無法否認(rèn)電腦能夠給他帶來認(rèn)識(shí)無限單詞和大千世界的機(jī)會(huì)。我希望我可以幫助他充分利用兩者——打字、復(fù)制、粘貼、草擬和涂鴉，盡可能充分利用種種方法來表達(dá)自己的想法。