I listened to a novel while commuting and enjoyed it, but a month later I can remember the mood and a few scenes, not the exact sequence of events. I tend to retain more detail when reading print, perhaps because I stop and reread more often. Someone joked that audiobooks don't count as reading, which seems silly, but it made me wonder how format changes the experience. Do you notice different kinds of memory or attention when listening versus reading?
Deciding whether audiobooks count differently when remembering less detail
- books-reading
- audiobooks
- count
- differently
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I don’t think the format makes it “count” differently, just differently. If I’m tired, audio is easier to follow but less sticky for me late...
I don’t think the format makes it “count” differently, just differently. If I’m tired, audio is easier to follow but less sticky for me later.
Same here. I also miss visual cues from print, like seeing a repeated word or noticing that a chapter is pulling the same trick again.
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One thing that helped me was slowing the audiobook down a touch and rewinding without guilt. That made the memory gap smaller, though not go...
One thing that helped me was slowing the audiobook down a touch and rewinding without guilt. That made the memory gap smaller, though not gone.
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My memory is worse with audiobooks for the exact details but better for tone and voice. Print feels like I can stop and poke at a paragraph;...
My memory is worse with audiobooks for the exact details but better for tone and voice. Print feels like I can stop and poke at a paragraph; audio feels more like being carried along by a current.
That’s basically how I experience it too. I remember scenes and dialogue from audio, but I’m much more likely to remember where something happened on the page if I read it.