How digital reading habits shape reading motivation and comprehension over time: Longitudinal associations in primary school.

Nowadays, children's reading habits extend beyond traditional printed texts, embracing new practices and forms through digital devices. The influence of such new digital reading habits on reading motivation and comprehension development remains largely underexplored. This study aimed to explore reciprocal causal paths between digital reading habits, reading comprehension and intrinsic reading motivation. To do so, we analyzed longitudinal data of 908 Spanish students from Grades 4 to 6. We estimated random-intercept and cross-lagged panel models to examine long-term associations between our main variables. Results revealed null causal paths between digital reading habits and reading comprehension for both leisure and academic purposes. After controlling for autoregressive effects and considering only within-person variance, one significant path remained from academic digital reading habits in Grade 5 to decreased intrinsic reading motivation in Grade 6. Our study provides new insights about the role of digital reading habits in the development of reading comprehension and intrinsic reading motivation in primary school students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).