Is it bad to read audio books?

For most books, for most purposes, listening and reading are more or less the same thing. Listening to an audiobook might be considered cheating if the act of decoding were the point; audio books allow you to seem to have decoded without doing so. But if appreciating the language and the story is the point, it’s not.

Does listening to audiobooks count as reading?

Your brain understands audiobooks just as well as print books. Though research on visual versus auditory comprehension is limited and often mixed, a 2016 study showed that people who listened to Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken understood and remembered the novel just as well as those who read it.

Is reading or audiobooks better?

While listening to an audiobook may help more with empathy and making the story come alive, she says reading is a better bet for retaining the information. She points to one study showing that reading was better than listening for actually holding someone’s attention and remembering the information.

Is it cheating to listen to an audiobook?

Reading and listening both result in comprehension, which the brain accomplishes by translating written or heard words into words in the mind — a process called decoding. So, in short, listening to audiobooks isn’t “cheating” as some die-hard readers might purport.

Are audiobooks good for your brain?

According to the Audio Publishers Association, audiobooks help “build and enhance vital literacy skills such as fluency, vocabulary, language acquisition, pronunciation, phonemic awareness, and comprehension—skills that often boost reading scores.” Need some audiobook recommendations for kids?

Are audiobooks cheating?

The short answer is yes, although audiobooks have a bit of a PR problem. Many people see them as “cheating,” a viewpoint that University of Virginia psychologist Daniel Willingham hates. “’Cheating’ implies an unfair advantage,” he writes, “as though you are receiving a benefit while skirting some work.

Are audiobooks good for brain?

Why are audiobooks cheating?

Willingham, who calls himself “a booster of reading,” said the suggestion that audiobook users are cheating could also be because people who read have to designate time and forgo other activities to do it. Multitaskers might not be devoting full attention to the book in the same way someone who is reading it would.