The next two papers present cross-cultural comparisons of the messages conveyed by storyłamka (Supraswati et al., 2011 Vander We
5000 Words
andreasing
not expecially robust or long-lasting, pictures facilitated children's immediate recall of the stories rut significant benefits were not maintained after a 1 week delay.
Our analyses of the story reading interactions reveals some of the things parents might do to support children's processing of the illustrations. These analyses showed that the presence of illus trations influenced both parent and child behaviors during story reading. Both parents and children made more references to the book in the Illustrated condition, and this increase in bouk ref erences was not limited to the distrations themselves, Parents and children also made more references to the text when pictures were present than when they were not. Nonetheless, the predictive models showed that these references to the hook were tot directly related to children's recall of the story events.
The global measures of story reading quality ako indicated that the illustrations prompted a more interactive and engaged inyle of story reading. Children in the lilustrated condition were less likely tir be rated us distracted than those in the Non-Illustrated condi tian, Indeeil, of the 7 children who were rated as distracted, 6 ware in the Non-lilustrated condition and 4, al of whom were in the Non-Illustrated condition, had parents who had made numerous engagement attempts. Thus, these pareru efforts at ragogement may have failed without the support of pictures. The predic tive models showed that children who more frequently displayed inattentiveness, and those who were judged in he completely distracted during the story presentation, had poorer recall perfor mence at the immediate interview. Moreover, the predictive value grep was somewhat reduced when these atientiam varsaltles were induded in the models. These patterns suggest that the par ents may have used the illustrations to hold children's attention to the story reading activity, leading to improved recall of the story events, at least in the short term.
Interestingly, parent emotional expresüreness мая actually higher in the Non-Illustrated condition than the Illustrated con- daum, suggesting that purenes may have tried to coomperssate tor the absence of illustrations by increasing their emotional expressiveness as they read. Perhaps they were using this slevated emotional expressiveness to keep children engaged with the story reading activity. Thus, our small sample of well-educated moth ers appears to be quite sensitive to the story reading contest. The fact that parent emotion expressiveness also was related to fewer recall errors at both interviews and higher overall recall at the I weck interview recall suggests that compensation attempts for the absence of pictures could have reduced the robustness of the dif ferences between the lihstrated and Non-Illustrated conditions. Of course, within-person comparisons of maternal story read ing with illustrated and non-illustrated stories sould provide a more definitive evaluation of this claim. It also remains to be seen whether this pattern would generaline to a more diverse sample, as pre-emergent reading behavikira have been shown to vary accord ing to socioeconomic atahia (Bos et al., 1995). It would also be important to explore whether these illustration effects on parcat
expressiveness would gencialize to different types of stories (4 stories that are either more ne less imenesting than thene used bere)
References to the events described in the story were the one category of story reading reasures that did met differ across the
Frontiors in Psychology pentas Pringe
Illustrated and Non-Illustrated groups. However, consistent with the literature on parent-child story-reading interactions (cg Kang, et al, 2009, Kim et al, 2011), individual differences in this dimension of story reading interactions were linked to differences in children's recall at the initial interview. In particular, children whose mathers offered more comments and questions about the events described in the stories, such as inferences or predictions about what will happen, learned more from the stories than other children. Therefore, although this feature of the interactions did not seem to account for the illustration effects, it seemed to soр post children's recall of the events in the story regardless of the presentation format.
Overall, the pattern of results in this study suggests that the lustratious prompted more interactive story reading and more behaviors knows to predict improved literacy outcomes for chil- Jren (eg, Whitehunt et al., 1998; Haden et al., 1996; Rare and Cat, 1994, Hood et al., 2001. Furthermore, the illustrations did produce recall enhancements and parerit and child story-reading behaviors predicted children's story secall. Numetheless, our story mading measures saly partially accounted for the etfrets of the alustrations on children's story recall. This pattern suggests that our story reading measures simply may not have captured the actual mediating variables. For instance, it seems likely that it is simply the joint attention established between parent and child in this contest supporis children's processing of the illustratams, t is also quite possible that the dimensions of story reading that we measured support dimensions of children's processing and recall
of the sturies that we did not capture in this study.
The current study was limited to mother-child story sto rybook reading, and there is some evidence that parent-child book reading may differ for mothers and fathers (Anderson et al, 2004). Fur instaner, Ankeren et al. (2004) found that fathers asked for more clarification and made more confirms tions when reading informational books to their 4 year-olds than mothers. Although previous research has not found differences in how fathers and mothers rend narrative stories to children, future research shirald explore whether the effects of illustra cions observed in mothers in this study extend to fathers' reading styles.
Another future comideration in understanding illustration effects on book reading with young children is the gerne of book, as some work has documented differenon in book reading inter actions depending on genre of book (Mason et al. w Price et al., 2009). Prae et al. (2009) found umstantial differences in parents book reading, for storybooka verses informational, nоп Action books. For instance, pareats spent more time reading and commenting on the inflemational books than the storybhouka, Moreover, parents provided more feedback to the child, com mented more about the character/animal, and made more elab oratioru and inferences during the informational book reading. Interestingly, the storyboolos in their study averaged right more illustrations than the informational books. Similar interactional patterns have been observed with teacher book sharing (M 1989), Parents and wachers heightened commenting and claborating on informational books could potentially provide even greater suffolding for illustration processing, kuding tw
heightened puture facilitation effects
Storybooks aren't just for fun: narrative and non-narrative picture books foster equal amounts of generic language during mother-toddler book sharing
Angela Nyhout and Daniela K. O'Neill
Даралтеля at Prystotny reversity of Whedon Wasonic DM fanane
Edited by Carmel Houston University
Reviewed by:
*Cortesponden
University of Mчеток, 200 Uversity were West o
Parents and children encounter a variety of animals and objects in the early picture nocks they share, nut little is known about how the context in whion these entices are presented influences talk about them. The present study investigated how the presence or absence of a visual narrative context influences mothers' tendency to refer to animals as individual characters or as members of a and when sharing picture books with their toddlers trean age 21.3 months. Mother chile dyads shared both a narrative and a non-narrative book, each featuring six animals and matched in terms of length and quantity of text. Mothers made more specific individual referring) statements about animals in the narrative pooks, whereas they provided more labe's for animals in the non-narrative books. But, of mest interest, the frequency and proportion of mothers use of generic Exind-releming) utsurances did not difler across the two different types of books. Further coding of the content of the torancos revealed that mothers provided more story specific descriptions of states and actions of the animale when sharing narative books and inare physical descriptions of animals when sharing nan narrative books, However, the two books did not differ in terms of their elicitation of natural facts about the animals. Overall although the two types of books encouraged different types of talk more mothers, they stimulated generic language and talk about natural facts to an equal degree. Implications for learning from picture storybotics and book gente selection in classrooms and home reading are visUUSSU
Kaywords: ganate language, parent-child Interactions, book sharing, narrative books, informational books, besk gente, contactual inuances
INTRODUCTION
Individuals possess knowledge about events, objects, wind living things that they have tast observeal firu hand. Historical events, entities too distant, and those too minute, are beyond what the average hurman can observe. Yet, most of us possess at least seme basis information about the ice age, the planet Jupiter, and aures Civen that most individuals will never have the opportunity to participate in an archeological dig or peer through an electron тістене, wе must learn ahmt auch entities indirectly. Ewen important sources of this information for children, relevant to the present article, are the testimony of other individuals (Harms and
Kunig, 2016 and picture bouka (Olammple and brow, 2003)
(Рамба, 2000, Canpan And Markman, 2000). This can lead to robust karning of facts about the world (eg. clephants are very awal animals) that in resistant to counter examples (eg Roman the elephant isn't sociable). Thus, whether children consider an entity as an indivalaal or as a member of a category can influ enax witether they incorporate the information they unununier into their knowledge-base. As such, it is of interest to investigate the factors that inffluence whether talk about entitics is primarily individual referring ve category referring.
CONTEXTUAL INFLUENCES ON GENERIC LANGUAGE USE
In a study by emanat al. (2000) parent child carevenciuss As children encounter objects (eg, a bicycle) and animals included more generic utterances when dyads interacted with pic- (eg., an elephant in picture books and other settings, they may tures of objects than when they interacted with the objects then- take them to be individuals (eg, Jamie's liicycle: Balsar) or memselves. Gelman and colleagues suggested this was because pictures bers of a category (eg, bicycles; elephants) (Hall et al, 2001), are more representational of categories, whereas objects are more When referring to entities in the world, certain linguistic markers äkely to be perceived as individuals in their own right. Comparing can distinguish whether one is communicating about the entity parent-toddler conversations actress picture book sharing and as an individual or as a member of a category. Information that toy play, Gelman and Tandif (1998) similarly found that generic is conveyed using specific language teads to refer to individa- atterances were more commen daring picture book. sharing then als (cp. "Shadow las a soft coat"), whereas infonnation that during toy play, cumprising 1.7% of utterances during book shar is conveyed tning generic language pertains to categories (aging. Thus, it is clear that contextual factors eiflumen the use of "Dogs have four legs"), Information that is delivered ning generic generic, category-referring language during interactions between
language is readily incorporated into children's knowledge-bases parents and their preschoolers or toddlers. In sulnequent studie
boots
Celmen et (2013) found that adults and 5 and 6-year-olds uned more generics when they were in a pedagogical context or role than when they were in a "peer to peer" situation. These findings provide support for Callen and Omgely's (2009) the ory of natural pedagogy, which posits that pedagogical contexts encourage the communication of generic information.
Given that picture book sharing seems to be a particularly fruitfal serting for talk about categories, it is of interest whether the format in which animals are presented in books can influ ence the use of language referring to individuals and categories Recently, in a first study to investigate this, Gelman et al. (2013) analyzed 75 informational and narrative picture books designed for 4 to 9 year-olds and found that informational books con tained significantly more generic noun phrases than narrative books. Both types of booka, however, contained significantly more specific noun phrases than they did generies.
Together, these studies established that contest does indeed
influence the extent to which entities are considered an individuals
oras members of a category, as reflected by the relative frequency
of generic language sme. Moreover, two of these studies (Griman
and Tardif, 1998, men et al., 2003) demonstrated that generic
language is present in mothers talk with their soddlers (23 to 38 month wide and 19. so 23-month-olds, respectively), the population relevant to the present study (18- to 25-month-olds) Cliven the young age of the children in the present study, another important consideration is the extent to which children of this age are sensitive to cues in language that distinguish generic and specific refereriis. Gelman and Harman (2003) found than 2- year-olds were sensitive to relevant morphosyntactic cues, such as the presence or absence of the definite article, the leg. Do the birds flyt vi. "Do birds fly?"), Gruhern et al. (2011) found that 10-month olds, but not 24-month olds were able to distinguish between generic and non-generic utterances to make inferences about novel kinds. However, because this task required the extra step of inductive inference, the findings do not necessarily indi cate a lack of comprehension amongst the younger age group Although there is currently no evidence that children are able to Jodinguish between such syntactic cues before the age of two, the presence of such syntactic distinctions in the input from adults
certainly peccodes their understanding
THE EFFECT OF BOOK GENRE
As mentioned above, picture book sharing appears to stimulate generic language use more than other types of parent-child inter-
actions that have been studied. Flow parents generic langiaige use may vary as a function of book geare has not, to our knowledge, been a subject of previous investigation. In particular, because the educational value of storybooks has been called into question (eg, Tort and Clugston, 1999, Borman 2018), it is of interest to investigate the extent to schich different types of books for young children encourage parents to express generic knowledge
and facts
Recent media reports suggest that picture storybook sales have declined as parentis seek bouka that they believe and more educational (eg, Hiseman, 2010), such as early readers and infie mational books. Non-narrative books (eg, books focusing on building vocabulary) for children frequently make slainn aberat
the types of skills and knowledge they can provide, whereas storybooks tend to provide only short synopses. Whether the nature of the communicative interaction that arises is indeed more educational when sharing non-narrative books, compared to narrative books, is relatively unstudied Nythout and O'Neill, 2013), Because of documented cross-contextual differences in parents talk, it is of interest to investigate how the genre of book parents shue with their children nay affect their use of more educatiumal" or "pedagogical talk. Akheragh pedagogical un
. texts certainly encourage many types of language, our focus in the present study was specifically on two types of language as indices of pedagogical language: (1) generic language and (2) natural facts.
Most arvestigations of the influence of book genre have com pared parents' abstract conuments and questions during narrative and informational fie, non-fiction) book sharing interactions between parenta and preckaolere. Cienerally, these studies have fouad that mothers' talk is more abstract during informational book sharing than during narrative book sharing (Torr and
et ugyan, 1999, Deterople, 2001; Andersin et al., 2004, Price al., 2009),
In contrast to findings with preschoolers, vee found that muth-
ers' talk with saddlers was more complex during narrative book sharing than during non-narrative hook sharing Nat and O'Neill, 20131. This different pattern of results was likely duc is differences in the age of the children and the last that we employed prester experinizatal coutimi over the books being com pared. Previous studies comparing narrative and informational books used books that differed on a number of dimensions such
as subject, number of pages, and quantity of texts and Clogmon, 1999; Dr Temple, 2001: Andrmen, et al., 2004), In addition to this sizable body of work investigating dille
ences in parents talk acrou hook genres, in one study (Ganes et al, 2011) it eas also noted that children were able to gener alize a principle camouflage learned from a picture book to scal world problems. They were able to in this reganiless of whether the information was presented in a factual or intentional Le, a tative framework, akhough the specific focus of the study was
aut on book gere
RATIONALE FOR THE PRESENT STUDY
In the present study, we analyzed the interactions from Mout aral (O'Neil (2013), but in this caur were interested in whether the context in which an animal was presented in a picture book intluenced the extent to which mothers referred to the animal as an individual ur as a marnber of a kind. We were specifically interested in whether the proswwce or abrence of narrative con est influenced mothers' tendency to refer to the characters es individuals or as members of a kind.
Suppose that a book features 6 animals. One prediction might be that presenting the 6 animals in the framework of a narra- tive will lead parents and children to consider the animals as individuals (eg. The Bear). Indenl, it is often the intention of tellers of narratives to introduce the audience to individuals, the protue of characters is at the core of what it is to be a narта tive (Neuner, 1986). In contrast, a the 6 arurnals are presentl
in a contextless (Le, non-narrativel manner typical of didactic books, parents and children may be more likely to think about
Frontiors
books
and discuss categories ar kinds of animals teg, bears). Indeed, introducing the audience to categories of animals or objects is miten the goal of creators of non narrative books (Martin, 1955), In support of these views, the content analysis of the texts of chil dren's narrative and international picture books by Gelman et al. (2013), discussed above, did find that the tests in informational books contained significantly mour generic noun phrases than the tests of narrative books.
But in hook sharing interactions between parents and chil dren, parents' talk may be differentially influenced by book genre. This may especially be the case in parent-toddler interactions, given that books with little to no lest may be shared, and par ents are freer to talk about the content as they wish, as found in Nyhout and O'Neill (2013). Thus, with respect to the use of generic or non-generic language, it is not necessarily the case that differences found to exist within the incs of different genres of books will pertain in the same manner to parents noll when shar ing these different genres of books with their child. Indeed, in a broader contest, the syntactic constructions presented in picture books texts for 2-year-olds have been found to significantly dif fer from those occurring in parents' tallk with children aged 21-32 months (Cameron Faulkner and Nohle, 2013), It is an open ques tion whether findings an genre differences in book texts extend to parents talk, especially when sharing books with very young children, who are the focus of interest in our present study.
Thus, to explore the influrner of book geare on talk about individuals and kinds, we compared mothers' talk with their tod Jurs while they shared co picture boolos, each about 6 animals: a short narrative and a non-narrative book. In the narrative books. the animals were introduced one-by-one within the content of a story with background scenes and with no text except for the label of each animal when first introduced. In the non narrative books, the animals were introduced one-by-one alone on a blank page with a single label (see Methods). Thus, the key manipulation was the presence or absence of a narrative context.
We were interested in both the forwing and the content of mothers' utterances. In coding the framing, we looked at whether mother's sterrents were presented wah a generic (eg., "Lana wy "том"") or povjer subject (eg. "He says "ar" or as a label (eg. That's a lion'), based on the soding scheme devel oped by ilman at al. (2005). In ending the content, we looked at whether mothers utterances comprised a phyncul description of an animal in the book (eg. "He has black and white fur огу эрец деription of an animals stale or action (e.g., "The bear is sleepy, or a natural fact, which included a description of an unobservable behavior or property of an animal in the book (e.g., "He (Isadger) uses his sharp claws and gues dig. dig, dig Note that these two levels of roding (froming and content) can offer unique information, especially when the content concerns physical descriptions or natural facts. For example, a natural fact could be presented by a mother using generic (eg "Armadillas can curl up in balis") or specific syntax ic.g. "He can curl up in a ball"
It seems reasonable to expect that mothers will employ me specific utterances during narrative book sharing that is as the animals engage in actixens unique to the story, it is likely mothers will describe titere actions (eg "The slepitant is escaping from
the cage!"). However, the differences across narrative and non narrative gentes in generic language use are harder to predict, if differences are present at all. On the one hand, one may predict that the non narrative books will elicit more generic language from mothers, because the anauals in the non-narrative books may be seen as maire representational of categories than when they are presented in the framework of a narrative. Note that this prediction would be in line with the predictions and findings of Gelman et al. (German and Tardif, 1998; velman st al, 2005), On the other hand, one may predict that the narrative books will elicit more graerir language from mothers, because the contest provided by the narrative hooka may trigger generis knowledge about the animals. For example, reading the popular children's book Stellature may remind parents of facts about bots' diet, habi hat, and behaviors in vears that a picture of a bat may not. Thus, w did not have firm predictions about how narrative context would inthurace mothers use of generic language, though we expected mont specific language during narrative book sharing.
METHODS
PARTICIPANTS
Twenty-five mother-toddler dyads participated in the study (12 girk, mean child age 21.3 months, range 18.9 i 25.4 months). Two additional dyads participated but were dropped because they failed to complete one of the books (s=1) and because the child was distracted for must if the bonk sharing interaction (1). Participants were recruited from a university laboratory database of local families and through advertisements in the community. Fifteen menhers (63%) had completed an undergraduate degree or higher, right had completed a techni cal college diploma (33%), and two had completed a high school diploma (8), Mashers ranged in age frorn 25 to 39 (mean = 32.8 years). Dyads were screened for prior exposure to the two books used in the study at the time of recruitment.
MATERIALS AND DESIGN
The bucks for the study were created by adapting t connenercially available children's picture houkos, Cand Night, Gorilla (Rathmann, 1994) and Don't Wake Up the Beer! (Murray 2003). In Good Night, Gorilla, a zoo keeper makes his rounds to ensure all the animals are loochund away for the night. Unbeknown so the zoo keeper, a gorilla bas stolen his keys and annaks behind him as he walks through the zoo and unlocks the other animala cages. In tum, an elephant, a linn, a giralfe, a hyena, and an armadillo all escape. The animals then tollow the zoo keeper back to his house. In Don't Wake Up the Beart, we are introduced to a bear sleeping in his cave in u sauey forex Five other woodland animals, who are out in the cold, arv trying to find a warm place to sleep. Orx-by-one, a kane, a badges, a fort, a squirrel, and a mo come by until they are all cuddled up together in the bear's cave Both original stories continue, hut we ended the adapted versions at the points described to allow for consistent length across book
versions (described below). Both books contained sit animals in antal and began with a single animal that was stined hy a new animal on each page, until all six were together.
From each original book, we created one narrative and one non surralive version for our study, which wars matcheal for
Otell
length in terms of both number of pages end amount of text, and the target content of interest (ie.. the sit animals), Good Night, Gerilla and Don's Wake Up the Bear! were renamed Animali at the Zoo and Animals of the Woosis, respectively. The nacrative ver sions of each book included the same original älustratiou, but the text on each page was removend and replaced with a single label per page identifying the focal animal. For the non-narrative ver sions of each book, we cropped the focal animal from each page in the origirtal and placed it in the center of a blank page with the sume single label. Thus, the two versions of each book included the sante test (the label for each animal) and the same focal ani mul. Critically, the illustration of the animal was the same across both genres. The manipulation of interest was therefore the pres racz or absence of an illustrated narrative context. For both the narrative and non-narrative versions of cach book, the final page presented all animals together with no text. I he narrative venions included the original illustrations, whereas the non-aarrative ver vions included discrete illustrations of itach animal that were arranged in a line acroon the page. Heatlers interested in sexing the two versions of the hooks may cautact the authors for a cupy.
Our design was within-subjects, and dyads shared either the narrative version of Animals at the Zoo and the non narrative ver sion of Avinuale in the Woods, or the narrative version of Anious in the Woods and the nou-narrative version of Animals at the Zoo The urder of presentation was fully counterbalanced.
PROCEDURE
Dyads were presented with the firu bouk and were asked to share the book as they would at home. The second busik was placul in a box, outside the child's view, and mothers were asked to retrieve it after finishing the first book. They were asked to share cach book only ones, from front to back. Dyads sat with the child on the mother's lap, in separate chairs beside each other, or on the floor together. The interaction were videu recorded.
TRANSCRIPT CODING
The interactions were transcribed using the Codes for the Human Analysis of Iranscription (CHAT) transcription system (MacWhinner ami know, 1900 MacWhimney, 2000). Hecate cach dyad shared two books (one narrative and one non- narrative), there were two unсrіpi per dyad
To begin with, all utterances in the transcripts that referred to one of the six animals in each book (ie, that had an animal as their subject, except in the case of labeling) were selected as utteraners to be coded. Utterances that referred to aspects of the background scene (eg, "Look at that moon" and events in the child's life (eg., "Rensember when we saw a lion at the zoo!" were eest incluuled in the coding
Utterance framing generic subject, specific subject, or labels
The utterance framing coding scheme was adapted from Gelman esal. (2005), who ended for generic påtrases, individuating phrases, and ostensive labeling phrases. Under the Geiman et al. (2003) coding scheme, generic phrases includeal those with bare plurals (eg. elegihants), indefiniis singulars (eg. an elephant), and definite singulars leg.. the elephant) as their subject. Specific (individuating) phrases included those with proper names fug
Namalive and nove protre books
Babar), singular pronouns (eg, he/shes, and count nous (eg sose elephants) as their subject, Given that the picture books used in this study only included labels for the animals and not proper names (eg. Babar), parens' commonly referred to specific animals using definite singulars (eg. The clephant is deering.). Thus, such definite singular omstractions were cuded as specific in all cases. Labeling phrases were those that served so place an individual in a category (eg, "that's a lion" and did not contain any additional descriptive information (eg., "That's a funny-looking hyena").
Utterance content: physical descriptions, natural facts, and
story-specific utterances
In an initial look at car tramcripts, we noticed that mothers would often make kind relevant statements using a specific b ject leg, a singular pronoun: "he says roar"). Thus, all the generic and specific subject utterances identified were further coded with empect to väenance conteri. In particular, each utteranor's com tent was coded as cititer physical description, story-specific, or natural fact. Table 1 provides more detailed descriptions and examples of the ending of utterance content. Via this anding, we sought to determine whether the two picture book genres differed in the extent to which they stimulated talk about the animals that provided unulnereale natural facta en informa tion about observable characteristics (physical descriptions) and depicted states and creats (story-specific). Our primary interest was in natural facis, because it is this type of information that is often expected to be conveyed using generic language.
Two coders, one blind to the purpose of the study, coded the utterances that referral to animals, as described above, in all 50 transcripts. Coding agreercent was excellent for both utterance framing (K=0,90) and content (k = 0.96).
RESULTS
Overall, as ruporiend in Nyhous and will (2015), mashers
praducil an average of 50.40 (ND 506) utteranas during narrative book sharing and 35.56 (SZD 14.58) utterances dur ing non-narrative book sharing, f(2)= 2.90 p=0.008. Note that the greater quantity of talk during narrative book sharing can mostly be attributed to the presence of the background scene, which was present in the narrative versions, but not the noa- narrative versions of each book. Mothers had the opportunity in discuss aspects of the background sorne daring narrative book sharing (eg.. snowy tree, the animals' cages). Because mothers. alked significarly more during narrative book sharing, Ne and O'Neill (2013) analyzed results for both frequency
- Writer
