Examining the Impact of Memory Supports on Children’s Word Learning During Shared Book Reading

• In Event: Shared Book Reading: Book Qualities, Interventions, and Teacher Behaviors that Shape Effectiveness

Abstract

Reading sessions between adults and preliterate children, commonly known as shared book reading, provide children with opportunities to develop important school readiness skills, such as learning unique words (Mol et al., 2008; Montag et al., 2015). These opportunities are important because greater lexical diversity predicts better language (Deckner et al., 2006; Raikes et al., 2006) and cognitive skill development (Kalb & van Ours, 2014; Marchman & Fernald, 2008). Nonetheless, little is known about the mechanisms that underlie vocabulary learning and retention from shared book reading. Books may benefit word learning by exposing children to lower frequency words, repetition of new words, rich conversation surrounding the reading session, and/or other factors that help children increase their general vocabulary levels. However, at the same time, studies on shared book reading suggest that children do not remember most of the book-specific, target words they hear during the reading sessions (Justice, 2002; McLeod & McDade, 2011; Sénéchal & Cornell, 1993). Moreover, cognitive factors found to increase the retention of information, like variability and presentation timing, have not been studied within the context of shared book reading. Perhaps because books contain relatively infrequent words compared to everyday speech, these words may need memory supports to be remembered.
In this paper, we use a virtual storybook format to examine the roles of variability and presentation timing as memory supports for word retention during shared book reading. First, we determined how variability in the questions asked during shared book reading affects the retention of novel words. Specifically, in Study 1, 4-year-olds were read books with words that were accompanied by irrelevant questions, the same questions, or different questions each time the word was presented. Next, we examined how two different presentation timing styles affect the retention of novel words. In Study 2, 4-year-olds were read books with words presented either sequentially or spaced in time. Children in both studies were tested at three different time delays (i.e., immediate, 5 minutes, and 24 hours) to determine how many words were retained in memory.
Preliminary results suggest, broadly, that neither variability nor presentation timing led to better word retention across the three different time delays. However, children in this study remembered about 4 new words even when tested after 24 hours, which is more than previous studies found (Jimenez & Saylor, 2017; Justice, 2002). These preliminary findings demonstrate that, in addition to supporting their general vocabulary development (Whitehurst et al., 1988), creating a highly interactive reading environment may benefit the learning of target words. Ultimately, these results inform word learning theories and serve to create materials for design-based interventions aimed at improving the quality of shared book reading sessions between caregivers and children.

Author

• Michelle Lynn Luna, University of Notre Dame
  Presenting Author