<![CDATA[In many contemporary media environments, reading is increasingly shaped by pressure to move quickly through texts. This systematic literature review examined how time pressure, perceived time scarcity and slow reading practices influence readers' attention and comprehension, and assessed the usefulness of temporal literacy as a framework for understanding these changes. Following a predefined protocol, the review identified and analysed 22 peer-reviewed studies published from 2020 to 2025 that explicitly connect reading with temporal experience. Data were extracted on study design, temporal and reading constructs, and cognitive, affective and temporal outcomes, and were synthesised thematically in three clusters. The synthesis indicates that the design of digital and print environments often encourages fast and fragmented processing. A perceived lack of time leads readers towards skimming and selective search, which weakens global comprehension, and readers with high anxiety pay for comprehension with greater attentional effort. Interventions that promote slow and attentive reading, such as mindfulness training and guided slow reading, improved attention, comprehension and reflection without increasing reading speed. These findings suggest that efforts to improve literacy will be limited if they ignore how readers experience time. The review proposes temporal literacy, the capacity to recognise when time-saving strategies erode depth and to choose reading rhythms that restore it, as a unifying lens, and recommends that educators, platform designers and policymakers treat reading time as a central element of literacy practice]]>
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