The Efficacy of Multimedia Stories in Preschoolers’ Explicit and Implicit Story Comprehension

Oral language provides a foundation for reading comprehension. Story comprehension is a fundamental oral language skill; it covers making inferences, identifying main ideas, monitoring, perspective-taking, and applying working memory capacity. Complex reasoning and perspective-taking are key factors in deep reading comprehension. Preliterate children’s deeper story comprehension skills can be initial indicators of their later reading comprehension. Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate preliterate preschool children’s story comprehension skills in detail. This study focuses on the additional multimedia features of digital storybooks and whether they hinder or promote young children’s explicit and implicit comprehension in a small group reading activity. The findings revealed that (a) children in the multimedia-enhanced storybook group outperformed the print storybook group in terms of both explicit and implicit story comprehension, (b) explicit story comprehension was higher than implicit story comprehension for both groups, and (c) the children recalled significantly more story elements and the length of the story retellings was greater with the aid of animated illustrations. The findings indicate that a digital storybook provides close temporal contiguity of text and visuals and may enhance story understanding by concretizing the narration. The study provides evidence that multimedia stories can foster children’s implicit story comprehension and inferential thinking about the content of the story.     

Enhancing Children’s Comprehension of a Televised Story Through Previewing

Abstract

In this study, we investigated the effects of previewing on children's comprehension of a televised story. Using a variation of Ausubel’s advance organizers, a 1½-min edited video was constructed to provide children with a brief overview of the basic plot structure before seeing the televised story Soup and Me. Study 1 examined the effects of previewing with 48 second graders using a multiple-choke test of 20 items, which assessed their recall of central, incidental, and inferential story information. Our results indicated that viewing a preview before a televised story significantly increased students' comprehension of plot-essential information, but did not influence their learning of incidental information or their ability to draw inferences from the story. Study 2 examined previewing’s effects on free recall with 39 first graders. Those students in the preview group recalled the episodic structure of the story significantly better than the control group did. Previews appeared to act primarily as a cuing device, drawing children's attention to certain central aspects of the story. These results indicate that previewing may be an effective mediational technique for enhancing children's comprehension and retention of plot-essential information from a televised story.     

The role of prior knowledge in inferential processing

The present research tested how domain-related knowledge influences inference generation during text comprehension. Two types of inference were examined, those that maintained referential coherence, referred to as local inferences, and those that were anticipatory in nature, referred to as global inferences. Three groups of subjects, each with differing degrees of domain knowledge, read a domain-related text that included both types of inference. It was found that all knowledge groups processed sentences involved in local inferences similarly, presumably because establishing text coherence is essential to comprehension. However, knowledge differences emerged in the processing of the sentences involved in global inferences. The results of two experiments suggested that individuals with prior knowledge used their knowledge actively to generate global inferences during reading. It was argued that this anticipatory inferential process guides the construction of a mental model of a text, built partly with explicit information and partly with existing knowledge.     

Concept Availability in the Causal Inferences of Children and Adults

What supplies the concepts in causal inferences in story comprehension? This question was examined in 5 experiments. Elementary school children and college students listened to stories containing a "premise" sentence describing a character's intent in initiating a series of actions, followed by an unexpected "outcome." After each story, the subjects were asked inference questions about the reason for the outcome (Experiments 1-4) or asked to explain the outcome (Experiment 5). In the various experiments, the availability of object concepts for an inference was manipulated by providing 0 or 2 clues preceding the outcome, additional filler information that diluted the clue information, a mention of an object in the premise or no mention, and an object title for each story or no title. The results suggested that the availability of an object concept in sentences prior to the outcome was a critical determinant of whether an object inference occurred, especially for children. Given availability, the thematic prominence of the object influences whether the object will be used in an inference.     

The use of think-aloud protocols to compare inferencing abilities in average and below-average readers

In this study, we examined whether think-aloud procedures would uncover differences in the kinds of inferences generated by average and below-average readers. Participants were 40 third-grade children who were divided into groups of average and below-average readers. All participants completed measures of nonverbal IQ, reading, language, and working memory, and a story comprehension task that consisted of two conditions: listen through and think aloud. The major findings in this study were that (a) average readers generated significantly more explanatory inferences than below-average readers, and (b) comprehension performance as measured by story recall was significantly better for both groups in the think-aloud condition than in the listen-through condition. The discussion addresses the implications of these findings.     

Maternal scaffolding and children’s narrative retelling of a movie story

Five-year-old children (n = 31) watched a brief videotaped segment from a movie with their mother, discussed the movie story with her, and then retold it to an experimenter. The quality of the stories the children told was related to the scaffolding strategies used by their mothers. Children whose mothers focused their own and the children’s attention on the story, prompted the children’s memories with questions and explanations, talked about the characters’ emotions, corrected the children’s mistakes, and engaged in extended exchanges about critical topics in the story during the preparatory discussion told significantly better stories than children whose mothers did not use such strategies and children in a control group (n = 14) who did not discuss the story with their mothers. Children’s recall of objective actions in the story was most strongly predicted by joint mother-child attention, extended exchanges on critical topics, and the mother’s correction of the children’s mistakes. Children’s comprehension of characters’ internal states was most strongly predicted by the number of questions the mother asked, extended exchanges, and correction. These findings have implications for how adults can promote children’s ability to understand, remember, and narrate a story.     

Inferences and recall at ages four and seven

Inferences and recall at ages 4 and 7 were studied as a function of the cause of a target event, the presence and timing of questions prior to recall, and the type of inference demanded by the questions. 7-year-olds inferred and recalled well with stories containing any of the causal connections employed in the study. 4-year-olds performed better when physical causes, rather than either psychological causes or enabling relations, connected events. Timing of questions did not affect the 7-year-olds' inferences, but asking questions interfered with their recall. Questions about story events aided the 4-year-olds' ability to make inferences and to recall, especially when causal connections were least specified and when questions were asked following the story. 4- and 7-year-olds also differed in responding to demands for 3 specific types of inference. 4-year-olds produced significantly more unconstrained inferences than logical or constrained informational inferences. 7-year-olds were most responsive to logical inference questions, and produced significantly more logical than constrained inferences.     

Effects of multimedia story reading and questioning on preschoolers’ vocabulary learning,story comprehension and reading engagement

The use of multimedia story applications on touch-interactive mobile devices has become prevalent in early education settings. However, despite the promise of multimedia story applications for early learning outcomes, there has been a dearth of research on the educational benefits of such tools, and whether their effects can be strengthened with the integration of questioning strategies. This study investigated the effects of multimedia story reading and questioning on children’s literacy skills, including vocabulary learning, story comprehension and reading engagement. Using a 2 (multimedia vs. paper) × 2 (question vs. no question) design, a total of 72 participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: multimedia story reading, multimedia story reading with questioning, paper story reading, and paper story with questioning. To identify the effects of Media and Questioning on children’s vocabulary learning, story comprehension, and reading engagement, we conducted a series of two-way ANCOVAs, controlling for different covariates as appropriate. The results showed significant interaction of media and questioning on target vocabulary and significant main effect of media for engagement, but the results showed no significant main effects of either media or questioning for comprehension. This study demonstrated research tools to examine children’s learning and engagement with interactive mobile devices, and suggested potential benefits of multimedia story reading and questioning for learning. We discuss implications of these findings for the design and use of multimedia storybooks.     

The impact of reading at rapid rates on inference generation

Aims

Speed reading is advertised as a way to increase reading speed without any loss in comprehension. However, research on speed reading has indicated that comprehension suffers as reading speed increases. We were specifically interested in how processes of inference generation were affected by speed reading.

Methods

We examined how reading speed influenced inference generation in typical readers, trained speed readers and participants trained to skim read passages. Passages either strongly or weakly promoted a bridging or predictive inference. After reading, participants performed a lexical decision task on either a nonword, neutral or inference‐related word.

Results

Typical readers responded to strong and weak inference words faster than neutral words. There were no statistical differences in reaction time between inference‐related and neutral words for speed and skim readers.

Conclusions

These findings provide no substantive evidence that the appropriate inferences are generated when reading at rapid speeds. Thus, speed reading may be detrimental to normal integrative comprehension processes.     

Children's Enactment of Characters' Movements: A Novel Measure of Spatial Situation Model Representations and Indicator of Comprehension

A story's space or setting often determines and constrains the actions of its characters. We report on an experiment with 106 children of 7–8 years old in which, using a novel enactment task, we measured children's representation of a story character's movement during story listening. We found that children were more likely to enact movements that were explicitly stated in the passage than those they had to infer based on their situation model representation of the house and the character's location within it. We found that this ability to infer movements was significantly predictive of children's narrative comprehension after controlling for oral comprehension, vocabulary, working memory, and enactment of explicitly stated movements. We discuss the role of spatial situation models in comprehension and potential future uses for this enactment task in research and classrooms.     

Why and How Parents Promote Math Learning with their Young Children: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

SYNOPSIS

Objective. This study examined parental characteristics that related to children’s early math learning. Specifically, we examined how parents engage in math activities with their children in the home and how their practices were informed by parents’ experiences with and perceptions of math. Design. Using a mixed-methods design, we first quantitatively examined associations between two parental characteristics, past math experiences and current math anxiety, and various types of math activities to understand factors that predict home math engagement in a sample of 34 parents. We then conducted semi-structured interviews with a sample of 15 parents to identify additional factors that relate to parents’ engagement in math activities with their young children. Results. We found that parents’ math anxiety predicted their reports of math activity frequency in the home, controlling for demographics as well as prior measures of math enrichment. Through qualitative analyses, we demonstrated considerable variability in the way that math activities are implemented and described by parents and identify a novel theoretical construct – parents’ goals for children’s math learning – which relates to parents’ practices. Conclusions. These results suggest that survey measures may fail to capture important heterogeneity in parents’ practices and that additional predictors such as parental goals should be explored in future quantitative research.     

Providing preschool foundations for later reading comprehension: The importance of and ideas for targeting inferencing in storybook‐sharing interventions

A significant gap in emerging literacy intervention with preschoolers relates to a skill that is crucial to later reading comprehension–the ability to engage in inferencing. This article presents a theoretical rationale for fostering inferential language during book sharing with preschool children, and provides research‐based ideas for how this can be best accomplished. It is suggested that, at the preschool level, children can be supported in their ability to make inferences about stories read aloud to them by having adults ask both literal and inferential questions that, first and foremost, relate to the causal structure of stories. Additionally, questions focused on informational and evaluative inferences serve to further enhance story comprehension. A rubric for connecting such questions to the elements of story grammar is offered, and a specific example from a published preschool level storybook is provided. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Online emotional inferences in written and auditory texts: a study with children and adults

Emotional inferences are conclusions that a reader draws about the emotional state of a story’s protagonist. In this study, we examined whether children and adults draw emotional inferences while reading short stories or listening to an aural presentation of short stories. We used an online method that assesses inferences during reading with a reaction time paradigm. Children aged 8 and 10 years and adults took part. We varied whether the short stories emphasized a certain goal of the protagonist in order to proof our assumption that protagonist-goals in stories help readers to build emotional inferences. Additionally, we assessed the updating capacity of our participants’ working memories assuming a positive influence. Results reveal that participants of all age groups drew emotional inferences. Type of text presentation, goal-emphasis, and updating capacity influence whether emotional inferences are built and how precise these inferences are. The way in which these variables influenced emotional inferences was moderated by the age of the participants.     

Children's inference generation across different media

In the present study, we investigated the degree to which children's inference generation ability generalises across different media and predicts narrative comprehension over and above basic language skills and vocabulary. To address both aims, we followed two cohorts of children aged 4 and 6 as they turned 6 and 8 years old, respectively. At each time point we assessed their inference and narrative comprehension skills using aural, televised and written stories. We also assessed their basic language skills and vocabulary. The findings demonstrated that children's inference generation skills were highly inter‐related across different media for both cohorts and at both time points. Also, children's inference generation had a significant contribution to children's narrative comprehension over and above basic language skills, vocabulary and media factors. The current set of findings has important theoretical and practical implications for early diagnosis and intervention in young children's high‐order comprehension skills.     

From words to text: inference making mediates the role of vocabulary in children’s reading comprehension

We examined the relationship between inference making, vocabulary knowledge, and verbal working memory on children’s reading comprehension in 62 6th graders (aged 12). The effect of vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension was predicted to be partly mediated by inference making for two reasons: Inference making often taps the semantic relations among words, and the precise word meanings in texts are selected by readers on the basis of context. All independent variables were significantly and moderately correlated with reading comprehension. In support of our prediction, the link between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension was significantly mediated by inference making even when verbal working memory was controlled. An alternative mediation hypothesis (vocabulary as a mediator of the effect of inference making on comprehension) was not supported by the data. The study replicates and extends the findings of earlier work (Cromley & Azevedo, 2007; Segers & Verhoeven, 2016; Ahmed et al., 2016).     

Connecting goals and actions during reading: the role of illustrations

The ability to integrate information that is separated within a text, such as connecting a character’s action to a goal stated earlier in the text, is a critical factor in narrative comprehension. In the present study, we analyze the ability of 9- and 11-year olds to integrate such information. In addition, we examined the effect of illustrations on integration process by using on-line comprehension measures. Participants read narratives that conveyed a character’s goal early in the text, and an action was described later on that was either consistent or inconsistent with the goal. Narratives were presented either with an illustration that mirrored the situation described in the goal, or without an illustration. The results show that 11-year-olds spent more time on the inconsistent actions than on the consistent actions; in addition, 9-year-olds detected the inconsistency when illustrations were provided. An additional finding was that working memory moderated children’s ability to connect actions and goals. These results suggest that children as young as 9 years form connections between characters’ actions and their goals during text processing, although they need an illustration to keep the goal information activated to detect the inconsistency. Illustrations’ effectiveness was interpreted in terms of extra processing of the characters’ goal.     

Inference making ability and its relation to comprehension failure in young children

Young children's reading comprehension skill is associated with their ability to draw inferences (Oakhill 1982, 1984). An experiment was conducted to investigate the direction of this relation and to explore possible sources of inferential failure. Three groups of children participated: Same-age skilled and less skilled comprehenders, and a comprehension-age match group. The pattern of performance indicated that the ability to make inferences was not a by-product of good reading comprehension, rather that good inference skills are a plausible cause of good reading comprehension ability. Failure to make inferences could not be attributed to lack of relevant general knowledge. Instead, the pattern of errors indicated that differences in reading strategy were the most likely source of these group differences.     

The Relation Between Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: Evidence From Mediation and Longitudinal Models

We examined the role of a hypothesized factor in reading comprehension: morphological awareness, or the awareness of and ability to manipulate the smallest meaningful units or morphemes. In this longitudinal study, we measured English-speaking children’s morphological awareness, word reading skills, and reading comprehension at Grades 3 and 4, in addition to their phonological awareness, vocabulary, and nonverbal ability as control measures. Path analyses revealed that word reading skills partially mediated the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension at each grade. Further, children’s early morphological awareness partially explained children’s gains in reading comprehension, and their early reading comprehension partially explained their gains in morphological awareness. These findings support the predictions of recent models of reading comprehension: that morphological awareness impacts reading comprehension both indirectly through word reading skills and directly through the language system and that morphological awareness underpins the development of reading comprehension (e.g., Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005).     

Health and Physical Efficiency of City Teachers

Abstract

Second graders’ think-alouds were analyzed to investigate whether children used different reading strategies to comprehend targeted story grammar categories in two basal reader narratives. The results indicate that the proportion of elahorative and non-elaborative strategies used by children differed as a function of category type. Two categories produced a significantly greater number of elaborative strategies as reported by children, and three other categories of story grammar elicited a significantly greater number of non-elaborative strategies for comprehension. One category elicited no significant difference in comprehension strategy. These findings are discussed in relation to previous story grammar research.