Do Audiobooks and Podcasts Help ADHD Learning?

I love walking. I wrote it on the first page of my diary too: when I walk I can think, I can turn a sentence over in my head several times.

Walking with an audiobook or a podcast in my ears feels much easier to me than reading. I do not have to follow a line, I do not go back to the top of the page, my body is moving. An hour goes by and I have "finished" two chapters of a book.

Then if someone asked me what was said in those two chapters, most of the time I could give no more than a general feeling and a few sentences.

This article tries to understand that gap. I also record podcasts on this site, so I am asking the question from both sides, as the one who listens and the one who speaks.

Why it is so appealing

I explained why reading is hard in ADHD in the article why is reading books so hard: reading requires following the line, holding the sentence in working memory and sustaining attention all at once. Listening removes some of those tasks. There is no line to follow, and the pace is left to someone else's voice.

There is also movement. Listening on a walk, while washing dishes, on the road gives a job to a body for which sitting still is hard.

These are real conveniences. But what gets easier and what gets learned may not be the same thing.

While listening, the mind drifts anyway

When my mind slips while reading, I notice, because my eye is stopped on the line and the page is waiting for me. While listening, the voice does not wait for me. When my mind goes elsewhere for three minutes, the recording keeps running, and most of the time I do not even know what I missed.

In ADHD this slipping has a name: mind wandering. A review of the research on this examined nine studies that met certain criteria. According to the findings, ADHD was associated with frequent spontaneous mind wandering, and when mind wandering occurred, functioning was impaired more. The authors also note that research in this area is still limited (Lanier et al., 2021).

For someone with ADHD, audio content therefore carries an interesting contradiction: it can be the channel that is easiest to start with, and also the channel where attention escapes most easily without being noticed.

The voice does not wait for me. The part I miss passes by without my noticing I missed it.

The evidence: listening, reading, or both

The study that answers this question most directly is a meta-analysis. Adesope and Nesbit compared learning by listening only, by reading only, and by both listening to and reading the same text, across 57 independent studies. Those who both listened and read learned better than those who only listened. Between those who both listened and read and those who only read, no difference emerged (Adesope and Nesbit, 2012).

The participants did not have ADHD. But the finding draws a limit around the comfort of "listening is enough": information that comes through the ear holds better when it is supported by the eye. In the article on reading books I had suggested reading along with an audiobook; this meta-analysis supports that reading along is stronger than listening alone, but it shows no additional learning gain compared with reading alone. For me the gain there is more about attention staying on the line.

For people with reading difficulties the picture is a little different. A meta-analysis examining software that reads text aloud and similar tools found that these tools raise reading comprehension by a small to moderate amount in students with reading difficulties (Wood et al., 2018). The sample of this study is reading difficulty, not ADHD; but it matters because the two often occur together. I covered that overlap in the article ADHD and learning disabilities.

Is it possible to learn from a podcast

The most systematic data on the use of podcasts in education comes from medical education. In a scoping review covering 62 studies, learners reported that they liked podcasts for their portability, their time efficiency and the way they combine education with entertainment. In 10 studies that measured retention of information, podcasts were not found to fall behind traditional teaching methods (Kelly et al., 2022).

"Not found to fall behind" is a careful phrase. It does not say podcasts are better; it says that under certain conditions they at least do not fall behind. The sample consists of medical students and physicians, and there is no data specific to ADHD.

Which channel for which job

The distinction I use today is this.

A first acquaintance with a subject: a podcast or an audiobook. Getting the general framework, the names of the concepts and where the debate stands by ear is enough for me. This is the most suitable content for listening on a walk.

Detail, memorization, exams: text and audio together, or text alone, pen in hand. What comes by ear alone is not enough here.

Review: listening aloud to something I have read before is a good reminder. Familiar content is not completely lost even if the mind slips.

At the same time as another task that needs language: never. When writing or reading, spoken content demands the same mental resource; I described this conflict in the article music and focus.

Speed control is a tool too. Speeding up a little reduces the gaps my mind can wander into; I collected the findings on speed in lecture videos in the article online classes.

A sentence at the end of the walk. When an episode you have been listening to ends, before you put the phone in your pocket, say aloud the one idea that stayed with you, or write it in a note app in a single sentence. If nothing comes to mind, rewind a little from the end of the episode. This small step turns passive listening into an exercise in recall, and it shows you where you missed something.

Looking from the speaking side

Since I began recording podcasts on this site, I think more about the listener's attention. Starting from my own listening habits, I have noticed a few things that make a piece of audio content easier for me.

Short episodes do not get left half finished, because they can be finished in one sitting. Saying at the start of an episode what will be talked about gives the ear a map; when the mind slips, it knows where to return. Short recap sentences dropped in along the way let you catch the part you missed. I have not measured these with research; I have observed them in myself as a listener.

The listener's side of this is to look for these features when choosing content. An hour-long chat with no map, jumping from topic to topic, can be enjoyable; but when I want to learn something, that is the format that carries me the least.

When I choose an episode to listen to in order to learn, I now look at three things: its length, whether it states the topic at the opening, and whether there is an order inside the episode. These three signs also tell me in advance whether I should listen to that episode on a walk or at a desk, pen in hand.

The limit of listening on a walk

Combining walking with listening does me a lot of good, but I have learned to tell two situations apart.

Listening while walking a familiar route at a calm pace does not divide attention much. On a new route, on a crowded street, or when crossing the road, attention has to go to the surroundings anyway. At those moments I either lose the content or lose the surroundings. The second is risky, the first is wasted.

So I choose what to listen to on a walk according to the route. I save a dense, detailed episode for a quiet park; on a crowded road I either listen to something light or do not listen at all and let the walk do its own work. In my diary I had written that while walking I can see what is around me; with my ears full, that part is a little diminished. Sometimes the best learning happens in the few minutes after I take the headphones off, when I turn what I listened to over in my head.

Does listening count as reading

I asked myself this for a long time. I was embarrassed to say "I read it" about a book I had finished as an audiobook.

Now I look at it this way: if the aim is to reach a piece of information, the channel is secondary. If the aim is to make that information lasting, the channel has to be chosen according to the job. They are different questions. For one, listening is more than enough; for the other, it needs support from the text.

There is also an order I find worth trying: first listen by ear to a book I cannot start, and when curiosity is awakened, return to its printed form. Once I know the general framework, reading gets easier, because in every sentence I know where I am going. In this order, listening does not replace reading; it shortens the road to reading.

If you are thinking of switching to audiobooks, it also helps not to see it as a one-time decision. Listening to one chapter of the same book and reading another shows quickly which one holds what for you. To know which order works, trying it on one or two books is enough.

People sometimes measure the value of something by how hard it is. Learning does not have to be measured by difficulty. Knowing where an easy way works is wiser than choosing the hard one every time.