The Effects of Text Elaboration on Children's Aural Language Comprehension

For the present study it was hypothesised that there would be an effect of media on hierarchical aural comprehension and that older children would. possess the cognitive structures to take advantage of the symbols presented by different media. Eighty kindergarten and third grade children were randomly selected and assigned to three media treatments of a story (text and illustrations; text and flannel board figures; text and animated film) and a control (text alone). The subjects were tested for comprehension of the story using twenty questions which were derived from modifications of the Barrett and Pearson & Johnson taxonomies (10 questions for each of two hierarchical levels). A treatment by age MANOVA was used to analyse the data. Significant main effects were found for both treatment and age. Age accounted for more variance in the higher order questions than in the lower order questions. It is believed that the older children had the cognitive structures to take advantage of the appropriate symbols.