ADHD and Audiobooks vs Reading on Screen: Which Works Better

For many people with ADHD, audiobooks make it easier to get through a book, mostly because you can listen while moving or doing something with your hands. For complex material you need to study, reading on a page or screen is usually better. Many people do best combining the two.

What research says about listening vs reading

For stories and general nonfiction, studies of adults have generally found that people understand and remember about as much from listening as from reading. The gap shows up with dense, technical material: reading lets you slow down, reread a sentence and skim back, which listening makes harder. There's little research specific to ADHD, so most of what follows comes from what people with ADHD report works for them.

Why audiobooks can work well with ADHD

• Movement helps focus. Walking, cleaning or doodling while listening gives restless energy somewhere to go.
• No losing your place on the page. The narrator keeps going even if your eyes would have wandered.
• Speed control. Many people with ADHD find a slightly faster playback speed holds their attention better.

Where reading wins

• Study and work material, where you need to stop, highlight and come back.
• Numbers, diagrams and tables, which don't translate to audio.
• Zoning out. With audio it's easy to realize you've missed ten minutes. With text, you can see where you drifted off.

The combination: read and listen at the same time

Following the text while hearing it read aloud, sometimes called immersion reading, keeps both your eyes and ears busy, which many people with ADHD find holds focus better than either alone. Kindle and Audible offer it for many books, and you can do it on any web page:

• Chrome's Reading mode (in the side panel) has a read aloud option that highlights the words as it reads.
• Your computer's built-in text-to-speech can read selected text too.

Making screen reading easier

• ADHD Reading Focus shows a web page one paragraph at a time, so there's only one thing to look at.
• Reading Progress Bar shows how far through an article you are.
• Bigger text, wider line spacing and fewer distractions help too. See the best fonts for dyslexia and ADHD.

How to decide

Try both with the same kind of book for a couple of weeks. Use audio for fiction, commutes and chores; text, or text with audio, for anything you need to learn. The right answer is whatever gets you to finish the book and remember it.