Poster #43 - The role of caregiver-child extratextual talk during book reading on children’s integration of science facts

• In Event: Poster Session 12

Abstract

Caregiver-child book reading is an important form of education for young children in informal settings. Through book reading, young children can directly learn facts about the world such as facts about animals, gravity, and evolution (e.g., Keleman et al., 2014). In particular, they learn novel facts when books include embedded questions (EQ) about facts and caregivers use elaborative extratextual talk while reading (e.g., providing details, examples, and comparisons beyond the text of the book: Miller-Goldwater et al., 2022). Yet to acquire a strong knowledge base, such as in science, one needs to go beyond directly taught information and integrate facts learned across separate yet related episodes to self-derive new knowledge (Bauer, 2021). For example, a child may learn the fact “Otters squeal to communicate” and then later learn that “The animal that squeals to communicate lives in a group called rafts.” Children can integrate these facts together to self-derive that “Otters live in groups called rafts.” There is substantial developmental change in children’s memory integration early in childhood. At 4 years, children integrate facts in response to forced-choice questions and by 6 years in response to open-ended questions (Bauer & San Souci, 2010). In the current study, we investigated whether caregiver-child book reading can be a means of supporting young children’s memory integration and tested whether books with EQ facilitated such integration.

We tested 70 5.5-7.0-year-old children (Mage = 6.12). In the study, caregivers read a book about animals to their child. In the book, a protagonist character went to school on 6 separate days. Each day had a different theme (e.g., how animals communicate, groups of animals) and throughout the book, there were 6 opportunities to integrate facts presented across days. Half the caregiver-child dyads read a book that included EQ and the other group read a book with no-EQ. The EQ asked children to recall stem facts directly taught in the book, never to integrate the facts. They were intended to increase the dyad’s engagement with the facts while reading and children’s recall of the book facts. After the book reading, children were tested on their integration of facts learned in the book in both open-ended and forced-choice formats.

We coded caregiver-child extratextual talk for evidence of and quality of integration. Quality of integration was on a scale from a brief mention that facts are related to elaborative integration that fully explains relations between the facts. Preliminary analyses showed that there is variability in the presence and quality of extratextual talk related to integration, with higher quantity and quality predicting children’s test performance. Additionally, they showed that the EQ condition related to more integration in extratextual talk and higher performance on the integration test questions. This research sheds light on mechanisms underlying developmental change in memory integration and identifies ways of expanding children’s knowledge base early in development.

Authors

• Bethany M. Williams

• Hilary E. Miller-Goldwater, Emory University
  Presenting Author

• Melanie H. Hanft, Emory University

• Patricia J Bauer, Emory University