Is Listening to Books the Same as Reading
Mary, who lives in regional Western Commonwealth of australia, loves audiobooks, merely not just for the stories.
She told ABC Radio Perth she thinks listening to them in the car has made her a safer driver.
"When y'all live in the country you lot tend to do a lot of driving and sometimes when you drive, you lot tin can't get radio reception or music and you lot drive fast. I clocked upwardly a few speeding fines," Mary says.
"Merely when I started listening to audiobooks, I dropped back down to the speed limit.
A traditional course of reading
Brigid Magner, senior lecturer in literary studies at RMIT University, says that reading with your ears "absolutely counts".
Dr Magner pointed out that historically, low literacy rates meant that most reading was aural.
"All reading used to be reading aloud, because reading wasn't shared past the whole community," she says.
"There would be designated readers reading to groups of people. So in that location'due south been a long history of this kind of vocalisation of written texts."
She says it also appeared that listening to books triggered a similar, although not identical, reaction in the encephalon.
"It's believed that it'south the act of listening to a text that triggers action in the encephalon quite near to the activeness that'due south triggered off by reading," she says.
Audiobooks savour pandemic boost
Audiobooks have exploded in popularity, with Nielsen research showing that 37 per cent of Australian listeners got into the habit simply in the past 12 months.
Older people take dominated the market for years, while younger listeners have more recently taken upward the practice now that most audiobooks are available via online streaming.
No longer exercise you need to borrow or buy a large prepare of cassettes (call back those!?) or CDs to mind to.
Audiobooks take also go big business for publishers and authors.
And while the audiobook marketplace is dominated by subscription service Audible, which is owned by Amazon, there are uncomplicated and free ways to access the latest audiobooks through public libraries, although merely like borrowing books, yous will demand to listen and return the audiobook in a prepare time.
"The Borrowbox app, which you can get through local libraries, is completely free once you've joined the library and [has] a really expert range of titles, so you don't need to pay anything," Dr Magner says.
Is information technology safe to listen to books while driving?
Mary'due south habit of listening to audiobooks while driving in the land is a great way to stay awake, says Paul Roberts, deputy director of the University of Western Commonwealth of australia'southward Centre for Road Safety Research.
"Whenever we do any kind of skilled task or cognitive task, nosotros desire our brain to be engaged to an optimal level but not overloaded," he says.
"In land environments, on monotonous roads, everybody's aware that nosotros can suffer from this phenomenon nosotros sometimes call passive fatigue, where we're not really tired, but nosotros're nether-engaged and so nosotros feel sleepy."
Yet Dr Roberts cautions that listening to audiobooks in urban driving situations could present problems by consuming too much of the commuter's attending and slowing down their reaction times.
He refers to a 2018 Canadian report where participants were asked to bulldoze in a simulator while listening to audiobooks. Their reactions differed depending on the driving conditions.
"In a complex environment, people actually reacted more slowly to hazards, and in a more than simple surroundings, they reacted more chop-chop while listening to audiobooks," he says.
"The critical thing is to appoint people to a level that keeps them at that optimal level of cognitive arousal, but that doesn't present besides much of a cerebral challenge, where they don't have enough capacity left over to deal with unexpected events while they're driving."
Listening creates extra fourth dimension for reading
For many audiobooks lovers, the adventure to 'read' while doing something else is a central attraction.
Joy told ABC Radio Perth: "I listen to biographies, classic and modern novels, travel books. I love them. I've learnt so much and feel and so much better read now.
"It's such a wonderful apply of my fourth dimension when in the car on my ain. I simply borrow them from the library, and I always accept one on the go."
Dr Magner thinks there is something virtually moving while reading that needs more investigation.
"A text, a story or narrative seems to embed in your mind in a way that's different to sitting stationary with a book," she says.
"There's something very special about existence able to, say, go for a walk and listen to Moby Dick, every bit my colleague does quite regularly.
"Information technology actually goes into your listen in a dissimilar manner, and I call up that's an area for farther research. Nosotros definitely don't know a lot about what's happening with the brain when we do that."
This article take been adapted from interviews aired on ABC Radio Perth.
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Source: https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/is-listening-to-audiobooks-as-good-as-reading-pageon/100448976
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