Are Audiobooks Cheating

Side note: If you ask the right question on the internet you will get the answer slanted to your belief.

Cheating would suggest an unfair advantage, are audiobooks available to everyone?

The definition of reading from Wikipedia - Reading is the complex cognitive process of decoding symbols to derive meaning. It is a form of language processing.

Listening is sequential while reading you can jump around easier.

Listening can offer the additional input of tone, this can be very helpful with hard to read things like Shakespeare or even more current works like Jane Austin or Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes where phrases used are not widely used or understood today.

Decoding - reading requires the extra step of the brain decoding words to be processed by the brain while listening does not

Once you have developed the skill of decoding symbols and continue to practice it at some level, does it serve us the keep practicing it in an effort to become more efficient?

NPR Article - Reading and listening both result in comprehension, which the brain accomplishes by translating written or heard words into words in the mind — a process called decoding. Research has proven this, Willingham said, pointing to a study that saw participants score equally as well on comparable tests based on written and verbal materials.

"Once you’ve identified the words (whether by listening or reading), the same mental process comprehends the sentences and paragraphs they form," Willingham wrote in the Times piece.

Brains interpret written and spoken information in the same way because humans haven't had enough time to evolve a strategy to differentiate the two. Writing is younger than 6,000 years old, Willingham wrote.

Types of learners:

Do you read books in the traditional sense, if so how do you distinguish between the books you will listen to vs the book you read traditionally?

Is listening to and audiobook less effort for you than traditional reading?

Is listening to an audiobook an intentional activity?

Do you listen passively or actively?

Can you call non-fiction audiobooks cheating but fiction audiobooks are ok?

If you are in a book club do you need to disclose you consumed the book through audio?

The books you were never going to read

Reading comprehension