The School of Information at the University of Texas, Austin and Dean Andrew Dillon are featured in a Fast Co.Design article on onscreen reading comprehension.
"In digital, we can link in different media, images, sound, and other text, and people can get overwhelmed," explains Andrew Dillon, a professor at the School of Information at the University of Texas, Austin, "These are disruptive activities that can carry a cost in terms of attention." Another study by Rakefet Ackerman Technion-Israel Institute of Technology also supports the idea that paper is sometimes less distracting than our computers. The researchers found that when people read short nonfiction onscreen, their understanding of the text suffered because people managed their time poorly compared with when they used paper (although paper’s advantage disappeared when people were given a fixed amount of time to read the text). Other studies have also found costs when people multi-task online in both efficiency and the quality of work they create (like a written report) based on their understanding of what they read.