The Role of Attention Regulation in Reading Comprehension in Beginning Readers

• In Event: 3-246 - Learning in a Noisy World: Regulating Children’s Attention at Home and at School

Integrative Statement

Introduction
There is a widespread agreement that selective sustained attention is vital for learning from the crib to the classroom and beyond. Development of top-down mechanisms of attention regulation could be particularly important for learning in formal settings, such as classrooms. Classroom settings may pose demands on attention regulation in young children for a number of reasons, including externally prescribed learning objectives and several potential sources of distraction (such as peers and engaging elements of classroom décor). In line with this prediction, we recently found that individual differences in the proportion of looking at distracters in a laboratory task of selective sustained attention was negatively related to learning gains from short science lessons in kindergarten children. The present study explored the role of attention regulation in a different kind of naturalistic learning environment, namely the print environment of a book designed for beginning readers. Inclusion of attractive illustrations is a common design element in books for beginning readers. There are a number of reasons for including illustrations in books for beginning readers, including: defining the setting and characters, contributing to text coherence, reinforcing the text, providing additional information, and motivating the reader. Engaging visuals have potential to motivate children, but visual details that are irrelevant to the storyline could pose a challenge to children’s immature attention regulation and thus reduce performance. The present study explored whether print materials for beginning readers can be optimized for learning by taking into account children’s developing attention regulation skills. Specifically, we selected a book designed for beginning readers from a popular reading curriculum.

Methods
Book type was manipulated within participants: Half of the book was presented to 2nd-grade children (N=27) using the commercially available version (“Standard” condition; see Figure 1), and in the other half of the book irrelevant visual details of the illustrations (determined by a separate calibration with adults) were removed (“Clean” condition; Figure 2). The order of the conditions (Standard first vs. Clean first) was counterbalanced across participants. SMI RED250 mobile eye tracker was used to measure children’s eye movements while reading to assess children’s attention, and a (slightly modified) set of questions provided by the book publisher was used to assess children’s reading comprehension.

Results
We hypothesized that the presence of engaging but irrelevant illustrations will increase gaze shifts away from the text leading to reduced reading comprehension. Consistent with this hypothesis, we observed a significantly higher number of gaze shifts away from the text in the Standard condition (7.43 gaze shits per page) than in the Clean condition (3.53 gaze shifts per page), p <.001, Cohen’s d = 2.06. At the same time, reading comprehension scores were higher in the Clean condition (M=79.89%) than in the Standard condition (M=47.09%), p < .001, Cohen’s d = 1.80.

Conclusion
These findings point to a fruitful avenue for collaboration among developmental scientists, educators, and book publishers to uncover low-cost and easy to scale basic principles for more optimal design of print materials for beginning readers to improve children’s literacy skills.

Authors

• Anna Fisher, Carnegie Mellon University
  Presenting Author

• Cassondra Eng, Carnegie Mellon University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Karrie E Godwin, Kent State University
  Non-Presenting Author