To Move, to Touch, to Listen: Multisensory Aspects of the Digital Reading Condition

Abstract

The article discusses modes of reading that emerge from reading situations that involve literary digital interfaces and digital audiobooks. Building on analyses of sensorial characteristics of the act of reading a digital audiobook and a literary digital app, respectively, the article presents and defines the concept of multisensory reading. This concept emphasizes the literary work's material and performative features, as well as the experienced reading situation. The authors explore how the digital literary interface changes reading situations and argue that new reading habits create a need to renegotiate what it means to read in a digital age. In particular, sensory aspects can be understood as integrally involved in what they term the digital reading condition.

Digital Edible Literacies: Ephemeral and Highly Affective

“…Analyzing digital stories, Stougaard Pedersen et al (2021, p. 290) highlight virtual time manipulations of stories as the site that readers can derive pleasure from: “there can be ludic elements in the app reading that deepen the reading experience in intense, shorter moments.” Such intense, short dips in and out of digital stories reduce the distance between audience and creator and this closeness corelates with readers' well‐being, both positively and negatively (Best et al, 2014; Keles et al, 2020). The ways in which DEL interweave ephemeral materiality with the human desire for virtual permanence opens up possibilities for a new appreciation of ephemeral stories.…”

Multisensory Reading in Early Childhood: Systematic Review with Theoretical Guidance for Human Development Studies

“…Our focus on the multisensory nature of children's reading is driven by the theoretical proposition that a focus on the sensory interplay, rather than on the reading medium, carries the potential for new theory building in human development studies. Our focus builds on the conceptual foundations of sensory reading studies that highlight that rich reading practices involve the engagement of the full sensorium, including the lower sensesolfaction, gustation, and proprioception (Stougaard Pedersen et al, 2021). A synthesis of literature was highlighted as necessary to understand the ongoing disconnect between empirical and theoretical approaches to children's digital reading, with observational and experimental studies focussing on social (e.g., parent-child interaction) or material (e.g., quality of books) aspects but only theoretical studies focussing on the socio-material and multisensory interplay in children's reading of digital books (Kucirkova, 2021).…”