BBC News - Making things hard to read 'can boost learning'

BBC News - Making things hard to read 'can boost learning': "Difficult-to-read fonts make for better learning, according to scientists.

The finding is about to be published in the international journal Cognition.

Researchers at Princeton University employed volunteers to learn made-up information about different types of aliens - and found that those reading harder fonts recalled more when tested 15 minutes later.

They argue that schools could boost results by simply changing the font used in their basic teaching materials.

Hard to digest
The 28 volunteers in the Princeton study were given 90 seconds to try to memorise a list of seven features for three different species of alien.

The idea was to re-create the kind of learning in a biology class. Aliens were chosen to be sure that none of the volunteers' prior knowledge interfered with the results.

One group was given the lists in 16-point Arial pure black font, which is generally regarded to be easy and clear to read."