Elena Maceviciute

Lithuanian participants seek to identify the features of digital media contributing to the reading skills and text comprehension of Lithuanian youth in relation to reading aims and situations (WG2), explore the impact of digital interface features of Lithuanian texts on deep reading experiences of different groups of young and senior readers (18-25 years old students and III age university students) in different reading situations, compare emotional impact experienced by these groups (WG3). A group of young Vilnius University researchers has submitted a research project to the Lithuanian Research Council. The goal of this research would be to explore perceptual and cognitive dimensions of reading. The scope of the research will be largely defined by the available financing, but during this stage we intend to concentrate on measuring attention, comprehension, memory, reflexion, and possibly some experiential and emotional aspects. The team of Klaipeda University plans to submit a project on experiential and emotional aspects of reading to the Lithuanian Research Council (WG3).

Our primary professional target groups are publishers and educators in. We expect that we will be able to contribute to all the deliverables planned in the E-READ, especially, to the development of the reading indicators on paper vs screen, recommendations to the industry and education, and scientific publications. We will also target the EU citizens, namely, parents, as our findings will improve parents’ understanding of the effects of digitization on youth reading. We plan to communicate our research results through various forms of mass media (accessible to parents’ audience). We expect to broaden the level of our cooperation with the partners in COST action and benefit from their expertise in the areas of quantitative measurement and neurological aspects of reading.