Full Text from Changing Fonts in Education: How the Benefits Vary with Ability and Dyslexia

- 35 minutes later, the students were each given seven multiple-choice questions that tested what they remembered from the slide.
- The students were not informed of the test.
   - Their names on the test were used to link to their MidYIS band and to find out if the students were dyslexic or not.

- Monotype Corsiva was the chosen disfluent font because in Diemand-Yauman et al. (2011), three fonts, including Monotype Corsiva, significantly improved in recalling information than Arial font.

Continuation Disfluent Fonts in Education Study

- Conducted a double-blind study.

- Students were shown a slide with eight facts about a fictional star during a regular class period.
   - Given 90 seconds to read the text.
- Afterward, the class continued with their regular lesson of copying notes from the board and completing their paper assignments.

- Control Group → showed a text with Arial font.
- Study Group → showed the same text but with Monotype Corsiva font (the disfluent font).

Rutgers University

- There is research revealing that harder-to-read fonts in education generate deeper processing.
   - Deeper processing leads to better retention and recalling of information.
- The paper discusses how disfluent fonts significantly improve retention and recalling information across a range of students, especially students with dyslexia.


Changing Fonts in Education: How the Benefits Vary with Ability and Dyslexia

French, M. M., Blood, A., Bright, N. D., Futak, D., Grohmann, M. J., Hasthorpe, A., Heritage, J., Poland, Remy L., Reece, Simon., & Tabor, J. (2013). Changing Fonts in Education: How the Benefits Vary with Ability and Dyslexia. The Journal of Educational Research, 106(4), 301–304.

- There is research that making education material easy is beneficial as it decreases cognitive load.
   - But there is also research that making the material harder is beneficial as it makes it easier to recall information in the future.

- Harder material is related to the idea that deep cognitive processing of information results in better retention.
   - Like desirable difficulties.

- Disfluency: when information is harder to process. 
   - Disfluency can be shown through changing fonts.
   - Alter et al. (2007): subjects who took a disfluent font test performed better.

- Disfluency may result in the reader thinking that they do not understand the material which pushes them to try harder to learn. This also can lead to higher cognitive thinking.
   - But it can also result in readers becoming less motivated and give up on learning materials.

Background in Changing Fonts in Education and Disfluency

- Disfluency is when an individual feels that information is harder to process. A disfluent font would be a font that is harder to read than the traditional font, Arial.
- There are mixed findings for the effects of disfluent fonts in learning material and recalling information (for individuals with dyslexia and in general).

 Disfluent Fonts

Disfluent Fonts in Education Study

- The mean percentages of correct answers for Monotype Corsiva groups in all four MidYIS bands were higher than Arial groups.
   - The disfluent font did not cause a lower score or result in students doing worse on the test.

- Currently, it is recommended to use simple fonts for dyslexic students.
   - In the study, dyslexic students had higher mean scores in the study group than dyslexic students in the control group (suggesting that disfluency is beneficial).

- After the study, the researchers did a follow-up survey that asked students about their thoughts on disfluent fonts. There was no significant difference in liking or not liking disfluent fonts.

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