There is some writing on this field, but a lot of it is speculative - there is little quantitative research so far. One could for example do studies of students after listening to a podcast, vs. watching a video or reading a text about the same topic, and see the differences in what sticks and not least HOW it sticks. I enjoyed claiming, a few years back, that the school system should just start using video if there wasn’t any research showing that it was inferior to text, but even though I met a lot of pushback from fellow teachers and academics, there were surprisingly few studies on why this would be a bad idea. (I do think it’s a bad idea).
Andrey Mir has a Substack about some of this (he’s also written a couple of books about adjacent topics). Here’s a post he wrote that might be relevant to what you wrote.
I recall some discussions about abstract reasoning declining, but I assumed that to be related to logical or mathematical abstract reasoning tasks and that the size of the decline was small.
It's very interesting if there's a connection here.
That's fascinating. I wonder if anybody's done a parallel study in English. Makes you wonder whether the change is driven by utility, and the ability to negotiate concrete matter is increasingly valued over that of wielding concepts.
My wife, who is a special education teacher, has a simple hypothesis. My generation learned abstract thinking through books and comics. The next generation read less, but interacted more with their parents. The current generation reads even less, and much of the interaction they observe is between adults and their phones.
That may change which kinds of language feel useful, and which kinds of thinking are practiced.
What surprised me was how little comparable, cohort-based material seems to exist. Perplexity suggests this kind of comparison is rare.
Interessant artikkel. Harmonerer med hva jeg ser som lærer på videregående. At det nye mediebildet (fra bøker til tv og nå i dag video) vil medføre en forskyvning fra abstrakt, konseptuell måte å tenke på, til en mer konkret, kanskje også følelsesmessig betinget, måte å orienterer seg i verden på, er en av poengene til kanadiske medieteoretikere som McLuhan og Ong. Jeg har forsøkt å skrive litt om det, men la det på hylla etter noen mislykkede forsøk på å få norske medier til å trykke det. Muligens for spekulativt eller bare at jeg ikke uttrykte det godt nok. Jeg klipper inn et par omtaler av Bloomberg-kommentatoren Joe Weisenthal, som har skrevet og snakket om noe av det samme:
- Return to Oral Culture: Weisenthal posits that, following a brief period of high literacy, society is returning to an oral cultural and storytelling format, where information is conveyed through narrative and performance rather than text-based analysis.
Trump as a Post-Literate Communicator: As early as 2016, Weisenthal identified Donald Trump as a premier example of this shift, noting his reliance on repetition, simple, "formulaic" language, and an aggressive, "polemical" style, which are hallmarks of oral, rather than written, communication.
I agree with your wife.
There is some writing on this field, but a lot of it is speculative - there is little quantitative research so far. One could for example do studies of students after listening to a podcast, vs. watching a video or reading a text about the same topic, and see the differences in what sticks and not least HOW it sticks. I enjoyed claiming, a few years back, that the school system should just start using video if there wasn’t any research showing that it was inferior to text, but even though I met a lot of pushback from fellow teachers and academics, there were surprisingly few studies on why this would be a bad idea. (I do think it’s a bad idea).
Andrey Mir has a Substack about some of this (he’s also written a couple of books about adjacent topics). Here’s a post he wrote that might be relevant to what you wrote.
https://substack.com/@andreymir/note/c-210666110?r=1cbjb&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action
I recall some discussions about abstract reasoning declining, but I assumed that to be related to logical or mathematical abstract reasoning tasks and that the size of the decline was small.
It's very interesting if there's a connection here.
That's fascinating. I wonder if anybody's done a parallel study in English. Makes you wonder whether the change is driven by utility, and the ability to negotiate concrete matter is increasingly valued over that of wielding concepts.
My wife, who is a special education teacher, has a simple hypothesis. My generation learned abstract thinking through books and comics. The next generation read less, but interacted more with their parents. The current generation reads even less, and much of the interaction they observe is between adults and their phones.
That may change which kinds of language feel useful, and which kinds of thinking are practiced.
What surprised me was how little comparable, cohort-based material seems to exist. Perplexity suggests this kind of comparison is rare.
Huh. Your wife's theory sounds pretty strong... and it really sounds like this is a field people should be paying attention to.
Interessant artikkel. Harmonerer med hva jeg ser som lærer på videregående. At det nye mediebildet (fra bøker til tv og nå i dag video) vil medføre en forskyvning fra abstrakt, konseptuell måte å tenke på, til en mer konkret, kanskje også følelsesmessig betinget, måte å orienterer seg i verden på, er en av poengene til kanadiske medieteoretikere som McLuhan og Ong. Jeg har forsøkt å skrive litt om det, men la det på hylla etter noen mislykkede forsøk på å få norske medier til å trykke det. Muligens for spekulativt eller bare at jeg ikke uttrykte det godt nok. Jeg klipper inn et par omtaler av Bloomberg-kommentatoren Joe Weisenthal, som har skrevet og snakket om noe av det samme:
- Return to Oral Culture: Weisenthal posits that, following a brief period of high literacy, society is returning to an oral cultural and storytelling format, where information is conveyed through narrative and performance rather than text-based analysis.
Trump as a Post-Literate Communicator: As early as 2016, Weisenthal identified Donald Trump as a premier example of this shift, noting his reliance on repetition, simple, "formulaic" language, and an aggressive, "polemical" style, which are hallmarks of oral, rather than written, communication.
Ellers spennende det du sier om engelsk.
Og merk at dette er smart unger. Unger som burde hatt gode forutsetninger for å kunne resonnere abstrakt.