Representation and Word Learning Opportunities in Best-Selling Preschool Storybook Apps

• In Event: Bedtime Stories in the 21st Century: What We Know—and Need to Know—About Digital Reading for Young Children

Abstract

Significance
As of July 2023, there were over 567,000 apps advertised as “educational” on the Apple App Store and Google Play. The actual educational value is unknown for most of these apps. In this study, we examined best-selling preschool storybook apps for the presence of new vocabulary words and the extent to which the apps promote diversity. Specifically, we aimed to determine (a) the types of protagonists in best-selling preschool storybook apps; (b) how these apps portray gender, disability status, age, and race; and (c) how these characteristics compare in apps that contain the highest and lowest percentage of new words. While representation in preschool printed books has been well-established, little is known about representation in preschool storybook apps.

Theory
According to the Cognitive Load Theory, human working memory has a limited capacity, which impacts children’s learning. Cognitive load can be reduced by various techniques, including by approximating learning content to a child’s personal characteristics. The identity-distance hypothesis, which guided our theory of change, is rooted in the Cognitive Load Theory and predicts greater learning outcomes from children’s storybooks with a shorter “distance” between the reader and story characters.

Methods
We conducted a content analysis of 70 best-selling preschool storybook apps. To develop our sample, we collected the Top 50 paid and Top 50 free apps listed in the “books” or “education” section in the Apple App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store in November and December 2020. Apps had to meet the following criteria: (a) designed for children ages 3-5, (b) displays the full text of the story, (c) written in English, and (d) written in the narrative genre. To define what constitutes a new word for preschool children, we used the Words Worth Teaching List, which rates root words based on children’s age of acquisition. We then grouped storybook apps into quartiles based on the percentage of new words in the story. We defined protagonists as characters at the center of a story who propel the narrative forward and who the reader closely follows. We drew from previous studies of preschool printed books to define characters’ gender, disability status, age and race, and used enumeration to identify frequency counts for each category.

Results and Implications
We identified 96 characters in the sample apps: 48 animals (50%), 30 humans (31.2%), 16 imaginary creatures (e.g., mermaids) (16.7%), and two objects (e.g., vehicles) (2.1%). Of the human characters (i.e., characters with the shortest distance between the reader), most were white (80%), male (56.7%), and children (83.3%). Notably, we did not find any characters with physical disabilities. Furthermore, in the group with the highest percentage of new words, all the characters were white. In contrast, the group with the lowest percentage of new words contained the highest percentage of racial minorities, including the only Black character in the sample. This study provides new insights into the characters portrayed in preschool storybook apps and how this relates to children’s opportunities to learn new words.

Authors

• Lori Bruner, University at Albany - SUNY

• Natalia Kucirkova, University of Stavanger