Easy to read = Difficult to Remember
17 Jan 2011 - 5:00pm
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wraevn
2010
I found this blurb on Engaget very interesting:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/17/princeton-study-shows-that-easy-fonts-make-things-harder-to-reme/
"...[a Princeton study] has shown that readers retain information more reliably when they are challenged with so-called "disfluent" fonts..."
I think Reeves and Nass would agree - their studies showed that low-fi audio/visual elements were better retained by the media consumer. I think they decided it was probably because you had to try a little harder to distinguish the a/v elements from the noise, so you were better able to remember them. I wonder if this is the same concept.
I'm interested in the community's thoughts on this.
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Perhaps the extra load that the disfluent fonts put on the working memory forces the brain to push more of the information into long-term memory. I'd much rather read the actual study for the specifics than a shock-value article that tries to ask us to draw our own conclusions. Interesting findings, nonetheless.