Illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff

Arts & Culture
Audiobooks don’t really count as reading? Think again.

Education scholars say rigor, learning same as paper, stigma an unnecessary hurdle

Liz Mineo

Harvard Staff Writer

March 2, 2026 4 min read

More than 40 percent of Americans think that listening to audiobooks is less rigorous and really doesn’t count as reading.

Cognitive neuroscientist Nadine Gaab disagrees, and she and other education scholars say the view is counterproductive when it comes to learning and development.

Not only does the brain operate the same when reading print books or listening to audiobooks, Gaab said, but the learning process is also the same.

“The theory of learning styles has been debunked,” said Gaab, the Silvana and Chris Pascucci Professor in Learning Differences at Harvard Graduate School of Education. “It’s not the case that someone learns better by listening or by reading. You may have a preference, but learning is sort of the same regardless of the modality. ”

Reading is a complex skill that involves the early development of brain regions that support sound and language processing, the essential milestone skills for learning to read, said Gaab. The neural networks that process written and oral language are deeply intertwined and largely overlap when reading print books or listening to audiobooks.

“There isn’t much of a difference between the brain network for reading and the brain network for language comprehension,” said Gaab. “The brain area we call the ‘letter box,’ which processes print, is not as engaged when you listen, but it has been shown that when some people listen to words, they visualize them, so the letter box gets activated as well.”

“There isn’t much of a difference between the brain network for reading and the brain network for language comprehension.”
Nadine Gaab

Listening to audiobooks meets derision in some circles, where it may be seen as “cheating,” but Gaab rejects that notion. Both print books and audiobooks offer advantages to readers, she said. While readers can review and go back to print books easily, audiobooks offer voices and sounds that make the story compelling and attractive.

Librarians wholeheartedly agree.

Readers should reflect on their choices by focusing on the purpose of their reading, said Alessandra Seiter, community engagement librarian at the Harvard Kennedy School. Some might favor print text because it helps them absorb information better, and others might prefer audiobooks because they allow them to multitask and save time.

“There is nothing wrong with audiobooks,” Seiter said. “There is no purity about reading words on a page.”

There are clear practical implications, said Alex Hodges, director of the Monroe C. Gutman Library at the Graduate School of Education. Print texts offer readers the chance to highlight passages or write notes that might help them retain information better, Hodges said. Audiobooks, on the other hand, may impart a more relaxed experience.

Laura Sherriff, librarian for the Cabot Science, Fine Arts, and Lamont libraries, would like to remove the stigma around audiobooks. In her former life working at a bookstore, she saw kids starting out with “Harry Potter” audiobooks and coming back to buy the print books. “It was their gateway to reading,” she said.

Regardless of their form, either print or audio, books introduce readers to new knowledge, imagined worlds, and complex language, said educational linguist Paola Uccelli, John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Graduate School of Education.

“In both formats, readers encounter not only new information but also text-specific linguistic patterns — and new possibilities for making meaning through language — well beyond what they are likely to experience in casual conversations,” said Uccelli.

“Audiobooks, particularly when students find them engaging and have opportunities to participate in book discussions, can be a powerful tool for helping developing readers expand not only their background knowledge but language resources essential for making meaning from text.”

Gaab’s lab examines how people learn from infancy through adulthood, with an emphasis on language and reading. She often recommends that parents of children with reading difficulties try audiobooks, along with print books, and reminds them that “the most important thing is that children are motivated to learn and excited to read.”

And adults, she said, should be less critical of audiobooks because that’s essentially how we all started.

“If you’re a good reader as an adult, it does not matter whether you read it or you listen to an audiobook,” said Gaab. “We all start as listeners to audiobooks. As children, we were sitting in our parents’ laps while they read books to us. So, we all have been audiobook lovers at some point in our lives.”