Limiting the number of words a user can highlight in digital reading materials can improve reading comprehension, according to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Waterloo.
Comprehension increased by 11% when participants were restricted to highlighting 150 words, compared to those with no restrictions.
The research received the Best Paper Award at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI).
Participants with limited highlighting scored higher on reading comprehension tests, as they focused on important parts of the text, using keywords and strategic highlighting, aligning with psychology theories suggesting constraints can promote creativity.
A web-based document reader was designed using React JS in JavaScript to track highlighted words and impose limits for the experiment with 127 participants. Limited highlighting did not increase mental demand, effort, or frustration.
Sources: phys.org, miragenews.com, uwaterloo.ca
This article was written in collaboration with Generative AI news company Alchemiq.
