Reading with a young child is important. But does it matter whether you read from an electronic book or traditional print? As any parent knows, small children are generally keen on screens. So the finding from a new study that very young children enjoy electronic books more than printed picture books may not come as a huge surprise — but the following additional findings might: both parents and children behaved differently when reading electronic versus printed picture books. And the children who read the electronic books learned more.
Previous studies of young children have suggested that electronic books, which incorporate extra features such as dictionaries and images that depict story events, may have advantages over print. In fact, multiple studies have found that electronic books support story comprehension and vocabulary gains beyond what is provided by printed books. But there's also work suggesting that children sometimes invest less mental effort in learning from electronic books, and that parents talk less about content when sharing such books.
The study we're looking at today aims to give us a better understanding of how good electronic books are for young children. For this study, researchers videoed children aged 17 to 26 months reading with one of their parents. Each parent-child pair was randomly assigned to read either two educational electronic books or two printed books with the same content. While the parent read the words in the printed books aloud, the electronic books had audio of voice actors reading the text.
The researchers found that parents who read the printed books pointed more frequently to pages than parents who read the electronic books. But the opposite was true for the children. Children who read the electronic books also commented more on the content and learned more new words than the children who read printed books.
This greater learning is ascribed to greater engagement with the electronic books. It's important to note that the electronic books in the study were simple. While they included background music, animation and sound effects, there were no other extra features.
It's also important to note that there's research on older children, finding that electronic books don't always bolster learning. Parents and educators need to beware. Extra features in electronic books may increase children's participation with them; however, if these features don't draw attention to the educational content, they may not serve as a supportive feature.