The rise of the e-reader in recent years has led to the growth of a bustling new industry of digital books. Along with the exponential expansion of the tablet – so much so that it is now an everyday device – e-readers are changing the way we read and access the written word.

While there are a lot of positives with e-readers such as the Kindle, such as a greater access to books from all over the world, more affordability and ease of access/transportation – slim and can hold thousands of tomes – a new study suggests some shortfalls.

Researchers at Stavanger University in Norway found that people who use an e-reader absorb less information than they ordinarily would if reading, for example, a paperback, the Guardian reported.

Given that these devices are becoming commonplace in schools and organisations all over the world, these findings could have serious implications across the board.

Participants to the study were provided with a short story by the British author Elizabeth George to read. 25 were given a Kindle and 25 were provided with a paperback. They were then tested on all aspects of the story, such as plot, settings and characters.

Needless to say, it was found that the former group was less capable in recalling key details, as well as their ability to correctly place events in the story in the right order.

One of the reasons for this disparity is to do with the device itself, the researchers speculate. After all, the content is the same. It therefore suggests that the “haptic and tactile feedback of a Kindle does not provide the same support for mental reconstruction of a story as a print pocket book does”.

"When you read on paper you can sense with your fingers a pile of pages on the left growing, and shrinking on the right," lead author Anne Mangen told the newspaper.

"You have the tactile sense of progress, in addition to the visual ... [the differences for Kindle readers] might have something to do with the fact that the fixity of a text on paper, and this very gradual unfolding of paper as you progress through a story, is some kind of sensory offload, supporting the visual sense of progress when you're reading.”