“Can you pretend to gnaw?” Learning from gestures during video chat reading

• In Event: Opportunities for learning from picture books and shared reading in monolingual and bilingual environments

Abstract

Shared book reading is a powerful tool for promoting early language skills. However, children have unequal access to hearing storybooks due to systemic disparities in resources (Barr, 2022). One avenue for promoting access to reading is video chat. Gaudreau et al. (2020) demonstrated that 4-year-olds understood a story and learned words equally well when read to in person, over video chat, and through a prerecorded, pseudo-contingent video.

The current study explores how children from under-resourced backgrounds learn words when they are read to remotely (i.e., video chat, prerecorded video) in their preschools. We examine iconic gestures as a tool to promote children’s learning since these gestures visually represent a concept (e.g., flapping arms for bird; Dickinson et al., 2019). We hypothesize children will: 1) learn words equally well when read to over video chat and through a prerecorded video; 2) replicate gestures similarly across conditions; and 3) benefit from being taught words with gestures.

To date, 29 4-year-olds (17 girls, Mage=56.46, 55.1% caregivers with Bachelor’s degree or higher) were randomly assigned to see the same storybook over video chat (n=12) or by a prerecorded video (n=13). Half of the target words were taught with gestures; half with verbal repetition. Other children were randomly assigned to a no-exposure control condition (n=4) to provide a baseline for children’s knowledge of the target words. After the book reading, all children completed two vocabulary assessments. Children selected referents of target words among sets of illustrations from the storybook (receptive vocabulary) and from sets of photographs (transfer vocabulary). Children completed these assessments again one week later in Session 2 to measure vocabulary retention.

Separate independent-samples t-tests did not reveal significant condition differences in children’s performances on vocabulary measures at Session 1 or Session 2, p’s > .160. However, small to medium effect sizes suggest differences may appear within the full sample, d’s > .21 (Table 1). Children in the Video Chat condition (Mdn = 8.00) gestured more than children in the Prerecorded condition (Mdn = 7.00), Mann-Whitney U = 18.00, p = .007. Correlations did not show a relation between children’s gesture replications and number of words they learned with gestures, p’s > .261. Paired samples t-tests did not reveal significant differences in learning words with or without gestures at Session 1 or Session 2 (Figure 1), p’s > .273.

Replicating previous research, preliminary findings suggest preschoolers learned words equally well when read to through video chat and by a prerecorded video, suggesting full contingency is not required for children’s vocabulary learning during remote reading at this age. Though video chat reading elicited more gestures than the prerecorded reading, children learned words equally well with and without gestures, suggesting that the benefits of being read to with gestures may not extend to remote reading. These results, if shown with the full sample, suggest that remote reading is an accessible educational tool to improve children’s vocabularies, expose children to story structure, and help them enjoy reading with a caring adult.

Authors

• Amanda Delgado, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Caroline Gaudreau, University of Delaware

• Rebecca Dore, Ohio State University

• Roberta M Golinkoff, University of Delaware