How Color Affects Reading Comprehension

Does color affect reading comprehension? Some say that using colored paper or text rather than plain white paper or black font can improve learning and performance. For example, could printing text on green paper help students read better, while another is yellow paper helps students perform better on math exams?

How accurate are these claims? If you're looking for a fun experiment idea for students, this could be a fun and easy experiment. Here's how to design a psychology experiment around this theory.

Research Questions to Consider

When preparing an experiment about color and learning, you may choose one of these questions to study in your experiment:

• Does using colored paper increase scores on a math test?
• Does using a different colored font increase scores on a math test?
• Does using colored paper increase reading comprehension?
• Does using a different colored font increase reading comprehension?
• Does printing text on green paper increase reading comprehension over other colors of paper, such as yellow, blue or brown?
• What color text works best for reading comprehension?
• What color text works best for math scores?
• Does using colored paper boost memory?

What the Research Suggests

It can be helpful to look at what current research says about whether color affects reading comprehension.

Results have presented contradictory findings. Some studies have found that colored reading overlays had no impact on reading rate or accuracy in people with reading disabilities and without. However, other studies have found that such overlays can help improve reading rate and accuracy.

Some research has suggested that visual overlays can help minimize visual stress and fatigue. This might be particularly helpful for those with specific vision problems, dyslexia, and other reading difficulties. 

Other research has suggested that the use of color can help induce wholeness, parts-whole organization, and phenomenal fragmentation when reading and comprehending written material. 

Developing Your Hypothesis

After you have chosen a research question, your next step is to develop a hypothesis. Your hypothesis should be an educated guess about what you think will happen in the experiment. For example, a possible hypothesis might be one of the following:

• Students who take a math test printed on colored paper will perform better than students who take the same math test printed on white paper.
• Students who read text printed on colored paper will perform better on a reading comprehension test than students who read the same text printed on white paper.

Planning Your Experiment on Color and Reading Comprehension

In the next step of your experiment on color and reading comprehension, you must select participants, create the materials you'll use in the study, and identify the key variables of interest.

Choose Participants

When choosing participants for your study, talk to your instructor. In some cases, you might be able to experiment with other students in your psychology or science course.

Develop Study Materials

After you have selected a group of participants, create the materials that you will use in your experiment. For this psychology experiment, your materials might include a math test printed on different colors of paper, reading selections printed on different colors of paper and/or with different colored fonts, and reading comprehension tests.

Identify Your Key Variables

Next, determine the key variables of your experiment. These variables may differ depending on the exact hypothesis you decided to investigate.

For example, if you are researching whether or not colored paper increases reading comprehension, your independent variable would be the color of the paper and the dependent variable would be the scores on the reading comprehension test.

Collect and Analyze Data and Report on the Results

After you have collected the data for your experiment, analyze the results. Did the color of the paper used have any effect on your dependent variable? Were the results of the experiment statistically significant? Write up your results in the manner required by your instructors, such as a bulletin board presentation or a lab report.