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In a within-participant design, 41 children (mean age = 64 months, range = 50–81) listened to brief stories in four conditions. Written text was present on the screen in all conditions (similar to the typical storybook experience) but combined with other sources of information: (a) only oral narration, (b) oral narration and a picture that was congruent with the narration, (c) oral narration and an incongruent picture, and (d) only a picture but no oral narration. Children’s eye movements while looking at the screen were recorded with an eye-tracker. An important finding was that a congruent picture contributed substantially to children’s story retellings, more so than a picture that was incongruent with the narration. The eye-tracking data showed that children explored pictures in a way that they could maximally integrate the narration and the picture. Consequences for interactive reading and picture storybook format are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories presented on phones, tablets and e-readers now offer an alternative to print books. The fundamental challenge has become to specify when and for whom the manner in which children retain information from stories has been changed by electronic storybooks, for better and for worse. We review the effects of digitized presentations of narratives that include oral text as well as multimedia information sources (e.g., animations and other visual and sound effects, background music, hotspots, games, dictionaries) on children's emergent literacy. Research on preschool and kindergarten children has revealed both positive and negative effects of electronic stories conditional upon whether materials are consistent with the way that the human information processing system works. Adding certain information to electronic storybooks can facilitate multimedia learning , especially in children at-risk for language or reading difficulty. Animated pictures, sometimes enriched with music and sound, that match the simultaneously presented story text, can help integrate nonverbal information and language and thus promote storage of those in memory. On the other hand, stories enhanced with hypermedia interactive features like games and “hotspots” may lead to poor performance on tests of vocabulary and story comprehension. Using those features necessitates task switching, and like multitasking in general, seems to cause cognitive overload . However, in accordance with differential susceptibility theory, well-designed technology-enhanced books may be particularly suited to improve learning conditions for vulnerable children and turn putative risk groups into successful learners. This new line of research may have far-reaching consequences for the use of technology-enhanced materials in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] A RCT was carried out to test effects of alphabet book sharing on learning letters. [•] It was also tested how the visual processing of pictures and letters affected learning. [•] Especially pictures of human and anthropomorphic interfered with learning letters. [•] Only a small part of letters attracted children’s visual attention. [•] Being familiar with distinctive features of letters may be an important step in learning letters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The goals of this study were to examine (a) whether extratextual vocabulary instructions embedded in electronic storybooks facilitated word learning over reading alone and (b) whether instructional formats that required children to invest more effort were more effective than formats that required less effort. A computer-based “assistant” was added to electronic storybooks. The assistant posed extratextual vocabulary questions. Questions were presented in a multiple-choice format so that children could respond by clicking on the picture that best represented the target word. In Experiment 1 (N =20), children read stories with and without questions. Children learned more words when reading with questions than without. Expressive vocabulary was particularly affected by question insertion. In Experiment 2 (N =27), we used two methods for teaching words: one requiring more effort on the part of children (questions) and one requiring less effort (“hotspots” that provide definitions). Results revealed that questions were more beneficial than just providing a definition or synonym of the target word. Implications for designing new e-book apps are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights • The study's aim is to test the efficacy of enhancements in film-like book presentations. • Four experimental conditions included all possible combinations of enhancements. • Children's story understanding, not word learning, improved when pictures were animated. • Auditory enhancements had a strong negative effect on children's receptive vocabulary. Abstract Experiments with film-like story presentations have been found to be beneficial in supporting children's story comprehension and word learning. The main goal of the current study was to disentangle the effects of visual and auditory enhancements in digital books. Participants were 99 typically developing children (41 boys and 58 girls) aged 4–6 years from two public kindergartens in Bursa, Turkey. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with a control group and four experimental conditions that included all possible combinations: static illustrations with and without music/sounds and animated illustrations with and without music/sounds. In each experimental condition, children read two different storybooks twice, each time in small group sessions of 2 or 3 children. The posttest included, apart from story comprehension, expressive and receptive vocabulary tests of book-based words. Story comprehension, not word learning, benefited from visual enhancements in digital books. Music and background sounds did not stimulate story comprehension and even had a negative effect on receptive vocabulary. To explain the findings, we refer to multimedia learning principles such as temporal contiguity. Consequences for a digital storybook format are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is reading subconsciously experienced as a source of threat by reading reluctant (RR) students which may explain their persistent resistance to reading? In four separate studies ( N  = 1205), we used a print exposure checklist to identify RR students in primary education (Grades 4 and 5) and secondary education (Grades 7 and 8) in the Netherlands. The visual dot probe task, commonly used to assess feelings of threat in clinical and health psychology, was applied to reading to test whether RR students indeed selectively attended to reading-related stimuli. Using a meta-analytical approach, we found that RR students scoring zero or below on a print exposure checklist were not only less proficient readers with a more negative attitude toward reading as compared to more enthusiastic readers, but also showed an attentional bias toward reading. The findings corroborate the theory that about 60% of reluctant readers avoid reading because reading is a source of threat to them. As part of promoting reading we need to find ways to make reading a less threatening activity for those students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]