I have better information retention from reading text in a book than on a Kindle/digital screen.
I'm not sure why, but turning the page and feeling a physical object seems to improve my memory. It might be wasteful, but it's often hard to beat the tactile sensation of books.
It improves your memory because it creates a stronger impression. There is more novelty in the experience of reading a physical book than an ebook in an e-reader. Ever notice how you have stronger memories of your first or second drive on some roads to some place than the later drives? After you've made the commute 100 times you find yourself at your office with no strong impression from anything that happened on the way unless there was something novel or eventful (like the suicidal deer that jumped in front of me yesterday)? An e-reader, even if it's a different text, ends up creating a similarly uniform and consistent experience that makes it harder to form the same kind of strong memories that a physical book tends to create. Each page is unique, the position in the book is actually conveyed properly (not just a small number in a corner or a progress bar at the top or bottom that you quickly learn to filter out), every book has a somewhat unique smell. It has weight and heft that also matter in the creation of the memories associated with reading it. Your e-reader will always be the same weight and have the same feeling in your hand no matter what book you're reading in it.
I mostly read ebooks now, but my main issue w/kindle and similar readers is that a lot of my retention is spatial. E.g I remember where physically something is in a book better than where in a reflowable document something is.
Sticking to a single, fixed size reader and avoiding changing font sizes helps solve some of that, but it's not quite the same.
I have had the same problem. Especially because going back a page on a Kindle can cause a reflow so words aren’t in the same position.
Have you had any luck turning on progress bars on your reader? Hasn’t helped me yet but I know I have a very good intuition on physical books for how far through the book a concept was. I can often just move directly to the area and then scan forward / backwards.
Not as much as I'd like. I think losing the tactile idea of physically how far into a book something is loses a signal.
On the other hand I think there are potential opportunities there in more strongly visually signalling position in ways you can't with physical books (e.g. by strongly visually signposting locations in various ways), that I wish someone would experiment with.
I'm not sure why, but turning the page and feeling a physical object seems to improve my memory. It might be wasteful, but it's often hard to beat the tactile sensation of books.