Curling Up With a Good E-Book: Mother-Child Shared Story Reading on Screen or Paper Affects Embodied Interaction and Warmth.

Nicola Yuill,Alex F Martin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01951

Abstract

This study compared changes in cognitive, affective, and postural aspects of interaction during shared mother and child book reading on screen and on paper. Readers commonly express strong preferences for reading on paper, but several studies have shown marginal, if any, effects of text medium on cognitive outcomes such as recall. Shared reading with a parent is an engaging, affective and embodied experience across time, as well as a cognitive task, so it is important to understand how paper vs. screen affects broader aspects of these shared experiences. Mid-childhood sees a steep rise in screen use alongside a shift from shared to independent reading. We assessed how the medium of paper or screen might alter children’s shared reading experiences at this transitional age. Twenty-four 7- to 9-year-old children and their mothers were videotaped sharing a story book for 8 min in each of four conditions: mother or child as reader, paper, or tablet screen as medium. We rated videotapes for interaction warmth and child engagement by minute and analyzed dyadic postural synchrony, mothers’ commentaries and quality of children’s recall, also interviewing participants about their experiences of reading and technology. We found no differences in recall quality but interaction warmth was lower for screen than for paper, and dropped over time, notably when children read on screen. Interactions also differed between mother-led and child-led reading. We propose that mother - child posture for paper reading supported more shared activity and argue that cultural affordances of screens, together with physical differences between devices, support different behaviors that affect shared engagement, with implications for the design and use of digital technology at home and at school. We advocate studying embodied and affective aspects of shared reading to understand the overall implications of screens in children’s transition to independent reading.

Highlights

When children share reading with their parents, on the road to becoming independent readers, does it matter whether they share stories using a traditional paper book or a tablet screen? Intense media interest surrounds the question of whether reading on screen differs from reading on paper, and there is a small but growing literature on the topic
Reading errors varied from 5 to 9% of words, indicating that the books were at the appropriate level, and showing no significant differences between book choice or medium of reading, both Fs(1,16) < 1
The majority focus only on parent-led shared reading, where the child is being read to by the adult, rather than both parent-led and child-led shared reading. We observed both types of shared reading to examine not just cognitive measures of recall and story engagement, and measures designed to capture other aspects that we believed were important to the child’s experience of shared reading: interaction warmth, parent commentary, postural synchrony, habits and attitudes to technology

Summary

Introduction

When children share reading with their parents, on the road to becoming independent readers, does it matter whether they share stories using a traditional paper book or a tablet screen? Intense media interest surrounds the question of whether reading on screen differs from reading on paper, and there is a small but growing literature on the topic. 74% of parents said they would rather their child read a print book than an e-book, and 50% of parents of 5- to 7-year-olds worry about their child’s excessive use of screens (Egmont, 2013). A report from the National Literary Trust suggested that using e-books may increase the motivation and reading skills of young readers, poorer performing boys (Picton and Clark, 2015). These questions have practical importance because parental involvement in reading influences children’s later language and literacy development (e.g., Bus et al, 1995; Senechal and LeFevre, 2002) and is entwined with the attachment relationship of parent and child (Bus and van Ijzendoorn, 1995). Shared reading is a potent environment for the sort of positive parent−child interaction that can contribute to socio-emotional development, as well as literacy (Aram and Aviram, 2009)

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