An Experimental Comparison on Reading Comprehension Effect of Visual, Audio and Dual Channels

ABSTRACTAudiobooks is booming audibly in the mobile age. According to Global Audiobook Trends and Statistics (2018), audio‐book performed better than e‐book, and US has occupied the largest market share, and the sales reached 21 billion dollars in 2016 and 23.5 billion dollars in 2017. Though previous researches show that the reading comprehension effect of audio channel is better than that on visual channel and the reading comprehension effect of dual channel combining visual and audio channel is better than the single channel. However, is that also established on the new mobile device? Using an experiment approach, we found that (1) The reading comprehension effect of the audio channel is better than that of the visual channel. (2) The reading comprehension effect of the dual channel is better than that of any single channel. That means listen to audiobooks through the audio channel and even the new reading format, like VR reading or AR reading should be encouraged in terms of the reading comprehension effect.