Educational institutions across the world are increasingly integrating tablets in the classroom, under the assumption that tablets improve students' learning. However, little research has specifically focused on the effects of tablets on reading comprehension of primary school children. Based on previous research with undergraduate students, we tested the hypothesis that primary school students will get more distracted, and subsequently comprehend less, when reading expository texts on tablets, as opposed to paper, particularly when they read under time pressure. In addition, from the lens of the comprehension levels hypothesis, we also analyzed the extent to which higher text comprehension skills could minimize the distractions and comprehension difficulties elicited by tablets during reading comprehension tasks. Results from a study with 182 upper primary school students (range 10–13 years old) indicated that those with low reading comprehension skills comprehended better when reading under time pressure in print than on tablet, but students with high skills were not affected by the reading medium. In addition, we found no evidence that tablets affected on-task attention. We discuss the implications of those results in light of the increasing classroom digitalization programs.

假设平板电脑可以提高学生的学习水平，那么世界各地的教育机构正在将平板电脑集成到教室中。但是，很少有研究专门针对平板电脑对小学生阅读理解的影响。基于对本科生的先前研究，我们检验了以下假设：小学生在平板电脑上阅读说明性文本而不是纸张时，会更分散注意力，而随后的理解更少，特别是当他们在时间压力下阅读时。此外，从理解水平假说的角度出发，我们还分析了更高水平的文本理解技能可以最大程度地降低平板电脑在阅读理解任务时引起的干扰和理解困难的程度。一项针对182名高中学生（年龄介于10-13岁之间）的研究结果表明，阅读能力较低的人在印刷品上受到时间压力的阅读比在平板电脑上的阅读能力更好，但是技能较高的学生不受阅读影响中。此外，我们没有发现任何证据表明平板电脑会影响任务注意力。我们将根据教室数字化计划的增加来讨论这些结果的含义。