Poster #243 - The Impact of Interactivity in Storybook Apps on Children’s Story Recall and Inference

• In Event: 1-115 - Poster Session 03
  In Poster Session: PS 03 Section - Technology, Media & Child Development

Integrative Statement

Recent developments in mobile apps in a tablet/smartphone platform enable digitized storybooks to provide animated illustrations and embedded hotspots that users can activate to bring up story-relate information. These interactive features seem to bring the story to life and provide story details that may help children’s reading comprehension.
However, very few studies directly tested the impact of the “interactivity” of storybook apps. Previous studies have often compared child reading of e-books with adult-child shared reading of print books (Takacs, Swart, & Bus 2015), confounding the effect of media and the interaction partner. Other studies compared reading of e-books and printed books by parent (Moody, Justice, & Cabell, 2010) but found that parents communicated differently across the conditions, thus confounding the role of partner and the media. Recent studies compared children’s reading of interactive and print storybooks (Neuman, Wong, & Kaefer, 2017; Richter & Courage, 2017). It still is not clear whether the benefit of interactive storybooks is due to the type of media, the interactive features, or both. The current study attempted to investigate the influence of interactivity of storybook apps on reading comprehension by comparing reading of an interactive versus a static-version of storybook apps.

Method
Participants included 45 kindergartners and 46 second graders of an elementary school (N=91). Four commercial, interactive storybook mobile apps were selected with varying numbers of interactions that are explicitly and implicitly related to the story: high-explicit/moderately-high-implicit (Cinderella), high-explicit/low-implicit (Jack and the beanstalks), low-explicit/high-implicit (Where do the balloons go) and low-explicit/low-implicit interactions (Teddy’s day).
These apps were adapted into a static version by recording screen play of storybook apps, thus maintaining animation parts of the storybook apps but not the hotspots. For each of the four storybook apps, children were randomly assigned into an interactive or static condition and used the assigned app individually on an iPad in a quiet room at school.
Children’s story recall and inference was tested using an in-house multi-choice comprehension survey on an iPad. Children’s initial literacy skills were assessed using Woodcock-Johnson III Letter-Word Identification and Picture Vocabulary.

Results
ANCOVA tested the impact of interactive versus static app use (see Table 1). Children in the interactive condition of apps with high-frequency explicit interactions had significantly higher recall scores than those in the static condition, Cinderella: F(1,83)=5.33, p=.02; Jack: F(1,83)=4.88, p=.03. Further, children in the interactive condition of an app with high implicit interactions had significantly higher inference scores than those in the static condition, Balloons: F(1,82)=4.39, p=.04.
Additional analyses showed interaction effects. Low-decoding children benefitted more in story recall from the interactive Cinderella app with high-explicit interactions than high-decoding children, F(1, 82)=6.90, p=.010 (see Figure 1). Story inference was benefitted more from the interactive Balloons with high-implicit interactions among high-vocabulary, F(1, 81) = 5.45, p = .022 and high-decoding children F(1, 81) = 4.02, p = .048. Benefits of using interactive storybook apps for children with different characteristics and the importance of explicit versus implicit contents of interactions will be discussed.

Authors

• Seung-Hee Claire Son, University of Utah
  Presenting Author

• Kirsten R. Butcher, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lauren Aimonette Liang, University of Utah
  Non-Presenting Author