Poster #113 - Enhancing Parent-Child Scientific Conversation through Storybook Reading

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Language, Communication

Integrative Statement

Children’s understanding of unobservable scientific entities (e.g., electricity, germs) largely depends on testimony from other people, as this knowledge cannot be acquired solely through firsthand observation (Harris, Koenig, Corriveau & Jaswal, 2018). One form of testimony is parental explanations that highlight the mechanisms underlying the scientific entity (i.e., mechanistic explanations). These explanations are particularly helpful in promoting children’s conceptual understanding and importantly, help learning transfer to novel situations (Lombrozo, Bonawitz & Scalise, 2018). However, mechanistic explanations are rare in everyday parent-child conversation (Authors, under review), raising the question of how best to encourage these conversations.

In the present study, we sought to boost parent-child mechanistic conversation by embedding mechanistic explanations about electricity into storybooks. We were particularly interested in whether this manipulation leads to a boost in parental mechanistic language with their children during a subsequent scientific activity about electricity, and whether it also improves children’s own understanding of electricity’s mechanism.

Four- to six-year-old children (N = 37; eventual N = 60) and their parents were recruited to participate at a science museum in the United States. 76% of parents had a four-year college degree, consistent with general museum demographics. During the book-reading phase, parents read a researcher-developed storybook with their children, with eight explanations about electricity embedded within the story. Critically, half of the dyads read books with explanations that referenced mechanisms of electricity (It’s a kind of energy that make things move, light up, or get hot), while the other half read books with non-mechanistic explanations (It’s a kind of energy that we can’t always see but is very powerful). Otherwise, the two conditions were matched for plot, story length, and linguistic complexity. Next, during the dyadic phase, the parent and child worked collaboratively to assemble electrical components of a circuit toy (a battery, switch, and 8 snap pieces) so that a light would turn on (Figure 1). All parent speech during this phase was transcribed at the level of the utterance using CLAN software (MacWhinney, 2000). Three coders then rated whether utterances contained evidence of mechanistic reasoning (e.g., We need to connect these pieces in a circuit). Finally, during the learning phase, the child was invited to assemble a circuit with novel components without help from the parent.

During the dyadic phase, all but two dyads succeeded in assembling the circuit. During this phase, parents produced 9.95 (SD=12.58) mechanistic utterances (14.89 percent of their total talk). Parents who had read the mechanistic storybook used more mechanistic language (M=15.7% of total talk) than parents who read the non-mechanistic book (M=13.97% of their total talk). However, this condition difference was not statistically significant, p=.62. Importantly, children in the mechanistic condition demonstrated a better understanding of electricity’s mechanism: 83.3 percent of children who heard the mechanistic book successfully completed the novel circuit compared to 34.8% of children who heard the non-mechanistic book, ß=1.93 (SE=0.79), p=.01, Odds Ratio=6.88. (Figure 2). The results of this study suggest that everyday routines such as book-reading can help support preschool-aged children’s scientific understanding.

Authors

• Kathryn Leech, Harvard University Graduate School of Education
  Presenting Author

• Youmna Jalkh, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Catherine Baldwin, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kathleen Helen Corriveau, Boston University
  Non-Presenting Author