Jakob Nielsen was making this observation ages ago with regard to Web pages.
I think it's a bit of a mistake to lump reading books on a Kindle in with checking e-mails on an iPad (at least assuming we mean the e-ink version); the former is much less task-oriented than the latter and I find I'm actually reading many more long and challenging books on the Kindle than I used to. Though of course I can't really explain why the students in the study mentioned had so much worse results.
Jakob Nielsen was making this observation ages ago with regard to Web pages.
I think it's a bit of a mistake to lump reading books on a Kindle in with checking e-mails on an iPad (at least assuming we mean the e-ink version); the former is much less task-oriented than the latter and I find I'm actually reading many more long and challenging books on the Kindle than I used to. Though of course I can't really explain why the students in the study mentioned had so much worse results.