>I wonder if the fixity of location provided by printed materials is a significant factor in increased retention. I noticed that I often remember what part of a

>I wonder if the fixity of location provided by printed materials is a significant factor in increased retention. I noticed that I often remember what part of a page I read something on. I find this to be very much true personally. The spatial organization of words on the page seems to provide a trellis that helps structure how I recall information. So much so that I intentionally convert epubs and other long-form documents to PDF these days before reading. I find this becomes even more important on material where I'm writing comments in the margins; the spatial relationship between the comments and the text helps me to recall both. I also tend to favour software tools that try to preserve the spatial relationship between pages. On Sony and Fujitsu e-readers, for example, when you pinch out, the display transitions to a 16-page contact sheet view that doesn't shift depending on what page you were just reading. At first blush, it seems lazy, why not show the current page and the prior 7 and subsequent 8 pages instead? But after a while you start to realize that it's to help structure your spatial position within the document, a little like how in a book the left hand pages are always to the right of the right hand pages.