Audiobooks Aren't Reading — And That's Exactly Why They Matter

By Emma Reid

Edited By: Keoni Andrews

Cover Image from Mohamed M on Unsplash

From scrolls to bound volumes to electronic novels, books have changed with each turn of the century — and with the rise of modernization comes a new medium: audiobooks. Audiobooks are defined as recordings of works, such as magazines or books, being read out loud. Originally, audiobooks were invented for the blind community by the American Foundation for the Blind, where recordings of books were printed onto vinyls for individual use (Theot, 2017). However, emerging technology has given easier access to these audio recordings — skyrocketing their popularity to the general public. Now, services such as Audible have millions of users listening to audiobooks every day (Singh, 2023). 

This available change for book consumption has sparked a heated debate over the last several years: do audiobooks count as reading? With the lack of a visual pathway found in typical reading patterns, many argue that they do not (Engle, 2025). However, neuroscience suggests something different. While their sensory pathways differ, these two processes share many neural features, including the way they perceive and comprehend language. 

This isn't to say that reading and listening to books are the same, but is there even a need for them to be? Often we frame this question under the guise of what counts as 'real reading,' but with deeply rooted traditions and scientifically backed cognitive benefits, both audiobooks and reading deserve to be understood on their own terms. 

The Neuroscience Behind Reading and Listening

While they seem simple, reading and listening are far more complex than instantaneously understanding words. When the brain encounters a word, whether read or heard, the same core language networks activate, making these two processes more neurologically similar than they seemingly appear.

Reading comprises four main processes: visual, phonological, semantic, and syntactic processing.  Both visual and phonological processes are involved in the physical appearance of a word, while semantic and syntactic processing are involved in its definition. When all of these mechanisms align, the brain is able to recognize, refine, and predict information from a word within milliseconds. 

Visual processing is done in the occipital lobe, where visual information from our eyes, such as letters and words, gets properly interpreted in the brain (Cohen et al., 2004). Phonological processing maps letters to sounds, a skill crucial in understanding how words are pronounced (Mathur et al., 2020). Think back to when your teacher made you rhyme words like “bat” and “hat” together — those exercises were strengthening phonological processing. Together, these two processes handle the physical recognition of a word.

For listening, this recognition happens differently. Sound waves travel into the ear and are eventually converted into electrical nerve impulses, which are carried to the auditory cortex in the temporal lobe (How Do We Hear?, n.d.). Here, vowels, consonants, prefixes, and suffixes are all processed by their specific sounds in order for the brain to register a complete, fully-formed word (Saenz & Langers, 2014).

This is the place where reading and listening intersect. Once a word is recognized, by either pathway, semantic and syntactic processing take over. Semantic processing involves a wide network of neural connections that pulls a word's associated features, such as sound, shape, motion, and sensation, from multiple cortical regions and unifies them into a single concept (Chen et al., 2020 and Reilly et al, 2017). This is why when you read or hear the word "apple", your brain conjures not just the image of the fruit, but also its scent, taste, and sound all at once. Syntactic processing then extracts meaning from the sentences those words form, drawing on past experiences with grammar to generate instantaneous comprehension (Fedorenko, 2025). Both of these processes, along with phonological processing, become active the moment the brain detects a word, whether spoken or read (Mineo, 2026). The pathway to the brain may differ, but the neural architecture that processes language remains the same.

Different Cognitive Experiences, Equal Cultural Value

Since the neural networks responsible for comprehending words remain largely similar, it’s easy to conclude that reading and listening to books are the same. In fact, most scientists would agree. Yet many people insist that audiobooks are still not equal with their physical counterparts. This conflict suggests a bigger question at large — one that peels back the science to reveal the deeper cultural values we unconsciously and intrinsically hold. 

The question itself, “do audiobooks count as reading?”, inadvertently accepts the premise that reading is the gold standard of society. While it can be argued that the difficulty in learning how to read over how to speak is greater and thus requiring more attention, the focus on reading guides us to accept it as a fundamental marker of status rather than preference.  

However, listening has its own rich cultural history — one that drives it to act as an important subset of many social foundations. It predates reading by millenia, making it one of the earliest skills humans have ever known. In early civilizations, oral storytelling was the primary form of record-keeping and information exchange, along with generating bonding rituals between communal members (The Ancient Origins, 2026). Even though the oral preservation of information has changed in popularity over time, there was once a deep dependence on this skill for generations. 

Additionally, there are still many present-day benefits to transferring information via verbal communication, especially for those who cannot read in a typical manner. For people with dyslexia, visual impairments, or demanding schedules, audiobooks aren't a short cut  — they're the optimal format to gain new knowledge. In general, experts agree that engaging in intellectually-stimulating content is important for brain health, so there is little need to diminish one approach over the other (Zickl, 2026). Instead of ranking these modalities based on intellectual legitimacy, we should start viewing these mediums by their content rather than their surface-level context. 

Audiobooks aren’t reading—they’re listening—but that doesn’t make them less than. Without listening, much of history, knowledge, and everyday conversations would not  exist. Although listening shares a similar neural experience to reading, it is still its own cognitively rich, culturally ancient, and neurologically legitimate act. The goal shouldn’t be to prove that audiobooks are as good as or even better than reading — it should stop them from needing to be. Reading and listening will never be the same, but both allow people to take part in an activity everyone reserves the right to enjoy.

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References

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Cohen, L., Lehéricy, S., Henry, C., Bourgeois, M., Larroque, C., Sainte-Rose, C., Dehaene, S. and Hertz-Pannier, L. (2004). Learning to read without a left occipital lobe: Right-hemispheric shift of visual word form area. Annals of Neurology, 56, 890–894. https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.20326

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Mineo, L. (2026, March 2). Audiobooks don't really count as reading? Think again. Harvard Gazette. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/03/audiobooks-dont-really-count-as-reading-think-again/

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Singh, S. (2023, June 13). How many people use Audible? User stats & data (2025). eReader.blog. https://ereader.blog/audible-users/

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Thoet, A. (2017, November 22). A short history of the audiobook, 20 years after the first portable digital audio device. PBS NewsHour. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/a-short-history-of-the-audiobook-20-years-after-the-first-portable-digital-audio-device

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