Exploring Features of Book Difficulty in Read Alouds with Preschool Children (Poster 14)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 3:45pm
  In Invited Poster Session: 2026 AERA Undergraduate Fellows Research Poster Fair

Abstract

The project explores features of story complexity in children’s books to help educators
support children’s story understanding. By adapting related work, a unique method for evaluating
book difficulty is being developed using existing approaches for measuring vocabulary
frequency and language complexity. The objectives of the current study are to explore
vocabulary frequency, sentence complexity, and text difficulty in children’s books. Using the
Corpus of Contemporary American English, a subset of picture books (n=12) was analyzed for
vocabulary features, including word frequency (low to high) and the number of words per page.
Analysis of language complexity using descriptive statistics, including percentages of complex
sentences per page and per book, is used to measure the cognitive challenge of the book. This is
done by coding story structure and the cognitive demands of plots and themes identified through
a constant comparative method.

Data come from the vocabulary, sentences, and cognitive difficulty of 12 children’s picture books used in a larger multi-year intervention examining Head Start teachers’ read-aloud strategies, support for comprehension, and responses to children’s misunderstandings. Preliminary findings reveal more nuanced variation in book difficulty when looking at multiple factors that influence children’s story understanding than when looking at a single factor. For example, some books with lower sentence-complexity scores contained more complex vocabulary. Additionally, more words per page do not directly correlate with the percentage of complex sentences or the occurrence of low- or high-frequency words. Coding and analysis of the story structures and cognitive difficulties per text are in process.

Author

• Joanna Rydberg, Vanderbilt University