The Affordances of Print, Electronic, and Digital Books in Parent-Child's Expansion and Construction of Thoughts

• In Event: 66.017 - Content Features in Digitized Stories That Promote Young Children's Vocabulary and Story Comprehension

Abstract

Purpose: Despite the proliferation of digital texts, and the increased use of technology devices and Internet at home, there is relatively little research involving young children as they (and their parents or caregivers) interact with these new forms of texts (e.g., Lauricella, Barr, & Calvert, 2014). The few studies that have examined this phenomenon have yielded inconsistent results. Furthermore, the potential effects of the multimodal features of digital texts (e.g., automated play) have not been closely examined in relation to parent-child verbal discussion during shared reading. The current study examines the affordances and constraints of a print book (PB), a hand-held electronic book (LeapFrog book; LB), a digital text with page turning (DB1), and a digital text with automatic play (DB2) by comparing certain types of talk (wh- questions; expanding and elaboration comments; projecting ideas, thoughts, or knowledge; and maintaining topic of discussion) considered to encourage expansion and construction of children’s thinking across the contexts.
Perspectives
This study employed Vygotsky’s socio-historical development theory as the theoretical frame to understand children’s learning and development through social interactions. To complement the analytic limitations in Vygotsky’s theory, systemic functional linguistics (SFL) was utilized to provide a theoretical basis to examine language in use systematically.
Method
This study involved 20 parent-child dyads (10 boys; 10 girls). Two children were kindergarteners, and 18 children were preschoolers. Families were instructed to read the four books as normally as possible by following their daily routine. They audio-recorded shared reading sessions at home. For the data analysis, all parent-child verbal interactions were transcribed. Then, verbal interactions were divided into messages that were realized by main clause (i.e., a clause containing subject and verb) based on SFL principles. Then, semantic network analysis was conducted using the WAG coder (a computer software program). After that, paired t-tests and contrast comparisons were conducted to examine any statistical differences in the frequencies of different types of interactions.
Results
The analysis revealed that the dyads used the four types of talk more often in the PB and LB contexts than in the two digital book contexts with some statistical significance. In the two digital book contexts, digital features seemed to hinder the dyads’ use of those types of talk. For instance, in the DB1, parent-child talk tended to focus on the operation of digital feature (e.g., page turning) rather than discussing the story or the written texts. In the DB2 context, the automatic play that narrated the written texts interrupted the dyads’ verbal exchanges. Thus, the more dialogic mode of talk—with the dyads’ verbal participation and following of each other’s talk—appeared to enable the extension of their discussion more often in the PB and LB than in the DB1 and DB2 contexts.
Significance
By utilizing SFL, this study examines language in use in different reading contexts and possible effects of digital features on the dyads’ language in use. Understanding these is important, as the four formats of books are available to families and classrooms for shared reading activities.

Author

• Ji-Eun Kim, The University of British Columbia