Digital Reading Comprehension: Multimodal and Monomodal Inputs under Debate

Abstract

In today’s digital context, it is essential for students’ academic and personal development to improve their digital reading comprehension. A comparative analysis of digital reading comprehension between three modalities is presented: dual (multimodal), auditory, and visual (monomodal). We used an experimental design and a standardized test (PROLEC-SE-R) of reading comprehension administered to 132 secondary school students in their first language. The quantitative analysis, which considered age, gender, and academic achievement, shows that there are significant differences in favor of dual modality or multimodality in digital reading comprehension. This shows that multimodality improves the level of digital reading comprehension the most. In particular, there is a significant difference in favor of the literal level of digital reading comprehension compared to the inferential level in all modalities studied (dual, auditory, visual). This yields pedagogical implications for optimizing digital reading comprehension.