Abstract
Digital literature is playing an increasingly important role in children's everyday lives and opening up new paths for family literacy and early childhood education. However, despite positive effects of electronic books and picture-book apps on vocabulary learning, early writing, or phonological awareness, research findings on early narrative skills are ambiguous. Particularly, there still is a research gap regarding how app materiality affects children's story understanding. Thus, based on the ViSAR model for picture-book app analysis and data stemming from 12 digital reading dyads containing German monolingual 2- to 3-year-olds and their caregivers this study assessed the narrative potential of a commercial picture-book app and how this is used in interaction. Results of the media analysis showed that the app provides a high number of narrative animations. These animations could be used interactively to engage the child in the story. However, results of the interaction analysis showed that adult readers do not exploit this potential due to their strong concentration on operative prompts and instructions. Furthermore, an explorative analysis of the relation between adults' utterances and children's story comprehension provided preliminary indicators regarding how the length of reading duration and the number of utterances might relate to children's understanding of the story. Findings and methodological limitations of the study are discussed and combined didactically with practical recommendations on how to use narrative animations in interaction effectively.
Highlights
Due to increasing media use across societies, even very young children’s media experiences have changed fundamentally (Ofcom, 2018, 2019; Bitkom, 2019)
We based our analysis on the ViSAR model for picture-book app analysis, which we have applied in previous works (Müller-Brauers et al, 2020; Miosga et al, in press) and which we present in the methods section
2 % of the narrative animations evoke a complementary relation to the text—for example, “The Grömmel was very scared”
Summary
Due to increasing media use across societies, even very young children’s media experiences have changed fundamentally (Ofcom, 2018, 2019; Bitkom, 2019). Besides gaming and entertainment apps, there is an increasing number of Narrative Potential of Picture-Book Apps educational apps, storybook apps, and electronic books addressing children’s language and literacy development in preschool age (Sargeant, 2015; Sari et al, 2019) Due to their flexible usability, technical features, and easy applicability (Serafini et al, 2016), these have become increasingly popular with parents and are supplementing print-based literacy activities in children’s everyday lives (Ehmig and Reuter, 2013; Neumann, 2014; Ólafsson et al, 2014; Kabali et al, 2015; Real and Correro, 2015; Kucirkova and Littleton, 2016; Chaudron et al, 2018). They can include technical features such as gaming activities, navigation applications, videoclips, or recording functions (Sargeant, 2015; Aguilera et al, 2016; Serafini et al, 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
