It's Hard to Wait: Effortful Control and Story Understanding in Adult-supported E-book Reading Across the Early Years.

As technology in various forms is permeating more and more of everyday life, it is important to consider what we know about child development, social interaction, and literacy development as they relate to a child's experience with technology. Caregivers, researchers, and educators are faced with the complex task of determining the quality of an e-book in terms of potential educational value, appropriateness, and suitability for individual children as well as the possibility for adult supports, or the ways in which the adult can verbally or gesturally support the child's engagement with and understanding of digital text. This cross-sectional case study situates and analyzes the e-book reading experience of young children in the context of a supportive adult interaction. The study examines two children's experiences during a shared ebook reading with a parent in order to describe aspects of development, including effortful control, and the role of the caregiver/child interaction as they impact the literacy experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]