Edited by: Erika Nurmsoo, University of Kent, United Kingdom
Reviewed by: Catherine M. Sandhofer, University of California, Los Angeles, United States; Ruth Ford, Anglia Ruskin University, United Kingdom; Deena Skolnick Weisberg, University of Pennsylvania, United States
*Correspondence: Gabrielle A. Strouse
Patricia A. Ganea
This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Picture books are an important source of new language, concepts, and lessons for young children. A large body of research has documented the nature of parent-child interactions during shared book reading. A new body of research has begun to investigate the features of picture books that support children's learning and transfer of that information to the real world. In this paper, we discuss how children's symbolic development, analogical reasoning, and reasoning about fantasy may constrain their ability to take away content information from picture books. We then review the nascent body of findings that has focused on the impact of picture book features on children's learning and transfer of words and letters, science concepts, problem solutions, and morals from picture books. In each domain of learning we discuss how children's development may interact with book features to impact their learning. We conclude that children's ability to learn and transfer content from picture books can be disrupted by some book features and research should directly examine the interaction between children's developing abilities and book characteristics on children's learning.
On the bookshelf of a pre-reader, one may find storybooks that take children to magical worlds with fantastical characters, to faraway lands with unique animals and customs, or keep them close to home with tales about backyard bullies or trips to the dentist. Alongside these, one may also find factual books about outer space, underwater creatures, or pre-historic dinosaurs. These books may differ from one another in a number of their features, including their genre, presence of fantastical elements, pictorial realism, and use of factual language. Children are expected to learn facts, concepts, or values and apply them to real life. The current body of evidence on whether children can learn and transfer new content from picture books suggests that it is important to consider both the dimensions on which the books vary and children's developing abilities. In this review we summarize the existing evidence on the effect of book features on young children's learning and transfer and outline three developmental abilities that may interact with whether children's learning will be impacted by the presence or absence of those book features.
The majority of past research on picture books has focused on the nature of the book sharing interaction between adults and children (e.g., Fletcher and Reese,
One goal of educational book-sharing interactions is for children to build generalizable knowledge they can learn and transfer outside of storybooks to everyday situations. By
Children's ability to transfer knowledge from picture books to the real world may be constrained by developments in their symbolic understanding, analogical reasoning, and their understanding of fantasy and reality. Although we discuss them separately, these areas of development are interwoven. As we will see, these developmental factors can be used to explain experimental findings on children's learning and transfer from picture books, as well as identify areas for future research.
One particular challenge that children may face when learning and applying real-world information from picture books is that of
Young children often struggle with tasks that require symbolic reasoning. For example, 2-year-olds struggle to use information from videos and pictures of a room to help them find an object hidden in the real version of the room (Troseth and DeLoache,
Various features of picture books may differentially affect children's ability to treat the information symbolically. For example, pictures that more clearly represent the objects they depict may support children in recognizing the link between book depictions and the real world (Ganea et al.,
For successful transfer of complex information and concepts, children may need more than symbolic insight. To transfer basic information like the name of a novel animal from a picture book, children need to activate a representation of the animal in the book and remember details about its appearance to correctly apply the label to the real-world animal. To transfer more complex concepts, such as the ability for animals (in general) to use color camouflage to hide from predators, children must also recognize the abstract features of the depicted example and apply these to novel instances. Transferring conceptual information from one domain to another—in this case, from the picture book to the real world—requires children to recognize the abstract relational structure between the two domains (Gentner,
Children's ability to reason analogically depends somewhat on the difficulty of the task and their existing knowledge of the relations used in the analogy (Goswami,
As with symbolic reasoning, various features of picture books may differentially affect children's ability to analogically transfer conceptual information in books. For example, given that perceptual similarity between transfer contexts facilitates analogical reasoning (Crisafi and Brown,
Children also have the challenge of determining which information in picture books should even be transferred. Anthropomorphism, or animals with attributes characteristic of humans, may be especially confusing when some information is meant to generalize and other information is meant to be true only in the story world. For example, if the cavies in a story talk and wear clothes, children must separate this anthropomorphization of cavies from factual information, inhibit transferring the unrealistic attributes, and selectively transfer only the factual information presented. Children's learning from picture books must be selective in that they have to separate what information is fictional versus what could be true in reality, which is generally referred to as the “reader's dilemma” (Potts et al.,
The process of keeping real-world knowledge separate from fictional or false information encountered in a story context may be especially difficult in early childhood because children between the ages of 3 and 8 are just beginning to differentiate fantasy and reality (Woolley and Cox,
The ability to accurately distinguish reality and fantasy may also be related to children's representational development. Corriveau and Harris (
Books with unrealistic content, such as impossible events or anthropomorphic depictions of animals, may present a challenge to children in separating which aspects of the book apply to the real world and which belong only in the book. Therefore, we again expect books with realistic content to be more supportive of learning transfer, especially when learning conceptual information such as scientific facts and concepts. Although these book features interact with the two other developmental factors discussed above—symbolic development and analogical reasoning—we also expect the developing ability to reason about what is real and what is fantastical to constrain or enable learning and transfer.
The following sections provide a review of how particular aspects of picture books (such as genre, pictorial realism, and the presence of manipulative features) interact with the three developmental factors we have proposed to influence children's transfer from picture books. We chose not to present this review as systematic or definitive, as research in many areas is in its early stages (see Table
Summary of book features' impact on learning and transfer in each learning domain.
Ganea et al., |
No studies | No studies | Simcock and DeLoache, |
No studies | |
Tare et al., |
Tare et al., |
No studies | No studies | No studies | |
Weisberg et al., |
Walker et al., |
Ganea et al., |
Richert et al., |
No studies | |
No studies | Ganea et al., |
No studies | No studies | Larsen et al., |
|
No studies | No studies | Venkadasalam and Ganea, |
No studies | No studies |
Particular features of picture books, such as the specific content they incorporate, or the way in which the content is presented, may influence children's tendency to learn and transfer the educational content to real-world situations. Below we review studies that investigate some of these features, organized by the domain in which the educational content is presented. We have chosen this organization because particular features may be more influential in some learning domains than others. For example, visual features may be important when learning vocabulary, where children may be fairly successful at transfer on the basis of matching up perceptual features of objects. However, contextual information may be more important in science domains where transfer often takes place on a conceptual level. The domains we have chosen are primarily the domains in which the impact of picture book features on transfer of information presented in books have been studied. In each section, we address the book features that have been studied in that domain, interpreted with regard to our three developmental factors. Future work is needed to address how book features influence transfer in other domains such as math and the arts, as well as how additional book features impact transfer.
Picture books expose children to rich language. For example, picture books contain a richer diversity of words (Montag et al.,
Picture books vary in the degree to which their pictures represent reality, from photographs to illustrations to cartoonish line drawings. An image that is highly iconic, or visually very similar to its referent, may highlight the relation between the picture book image and real-world instances. As such, we might predict photographs to be the most supportive of children's transfer of knowledge from books to reality.
Newborn infants perceive and distinguish the dimensional nature of pictures from real objects. If presented with a complex object and a photograph of it, they clearly prefer the real object (Slater et al.,
As infants reach the middle of their second year, they begin to treat pictures referentially, by pointing and labeling the depicted objects (DeLoache et al.,
The term “manipulative features” has been used to refer to features that are “designed to increase children's physical interaction with [a] book,” like lift-a-flap, scratch-and-sniff, and other three-dimensional add-ons (Tare et al.,
Using books designed to teach children animal names, Tare et al. (
Another possibility is that children's mental effort is engaged with interaction with the features rather than attending to the content. For example, pulling a tab in an alphabet book to make a truck move does not help to emphasize the correspondence between the letter T and the first sound in the word “truck.” There is other evidence that features that require additional mental effort, like having multiple large pictures on each page, can result in cognitive overload, disrupting learning (Flack and Horst,
Research shows that not all manipulative features are detrimental to children's learning. Multimedia researchers have argued that extra book features that engage children with the educational content of books (called “considerate,” Labbo and Kuhn,
For both word and letter learning, the manipulative features traditionally found in print books do not appear to facilitate learning and transfer, and in cases when the features are irrelevant to the book's educational content, may even interfere with it. Content-central manipulatives that highlight educational content, such as highlighting the visual shape of a letter—the crucial component for transferring the letter name to new instances of the letter—may hold promise in facilitating symbolic insight, and thus transfer. Research in this area will become especially crucial as the features available in digital books continue to expand.
In picture books both fantastical and realistic, children may encounter new and unusual vocabulary. However, we might predict that realistic story contexts provide more cues to children that they can use to match story depictions and contexts with real-world situations. The similarity between the learning and transfer contexts can provide support for symbolic insight—recognizing the similarity between a symbol and its referent—as well as for analogical transfer. A recent intervention with low-income preschoolers investigated the effect of fantastical or realistic content on children's word learning (Weisberg et al.,
Picture books are a rich source of new language. Because infants and toddlers are just learning to use pictures symbolically to refer to other objects, features that support this insight rather than distract from it are most supportive. If the goal is to teach children new words or letters, it appears that books with realistic images are best, especially with the youngest children. If books with manipulative features are selected, they should draw attention to the educational content rather than distract from it. More research is needed to determine the influence of realistic versus fantastical contexts on children's transfer of new words they have learned to other contexts, as well as how these contexts interact with children's developing abilities to distinguish fantasy and reality. Future research could consider not only the variety of picture arrangements on a page (Flack and Horst,
Children's learning about non-human animals has been the focus of most studies of children's biology learning from picture books. Children are naturally interested in animals from a young age (DeLoache et al.,
As is the case when learning the correspondence between words and letters and their referents, symbolic understanding can also play an important role in learning and transfer of biological facts and concepts. However, transfer of conceptual knowledge requires more than just symbolically matching a picture with its real-world referent; it often involves more complex reasoning about similarities between situations and selection of the correct details for transfer. Therefore analogical reasoning and discrimination between fantasy and reality should play a much more central role in young children's learning of biological information from picture books than it did for word and letter learning. The book features that have been studied in this domain include manipulative features, fantastical contexts, anthropomorphism, and genre.
Concerns about the use of manipulative features in biology learning mirror those for word learning. When children are learning to symbolically link picture books and the real world, distracting features in books may disrupt that link. In one study with 27- to 39-month-olds, children were read either a pop-up book, a book with realistic images, or a book with drawings (Tare et al.,
Although fantasy may be a much-loved and engaging genre, what do the violations of reality inherent to this genre mean for children's learning and transfer? Fantastical books may vary widely by mixing characters, settings, and events that vary in their realistic nature. Books with fantastical aspects could be an especially good choice for young children because they may engage children in imaginative thinking. Imaginative play may facilitate better causal reasoning (Walker and Gopnik,
In a study of children's causal learning from realistic versus fantastical picture books, Walker et al. (
In an analysis of 1,064 modern picture books, Marriott (
In one study, Ganea et al. (
In a second study, Ganea et al. (
Using storybooks with subtler forms of anthropomorphism, Geerdts et al. (
Another recent study offers insights into how anthropomorphic depictions influence children's biological reasoning and learning. Waxman et al. (
Children's anthropocentric biases may also interact with the format of the books in which they encounter novel animals. We know that children from rural communities, who likely had more experience with nature, are less like to take an anthropocentric perspective than urban children (Waxman and Medin,
Children may also use book genre as a cue to determine whether information should be transferred to new contexts or is applicable only to story worlds. Children's books can be divided broadly into fiction (generally narratives) and non-fiction (informational, generally non-narrative) genres. Informational texts are realistic non-fiction books that are designed to convey information about the natural and social worlds (Duke,
One hallmark of informational books is that they contain more generic language than narrative books (Gelman et al.,
No studies have addressed learning biological information from non-narrative information versus narrative fiction specifically; however, one study compared two books where some of the language differed in specificity. Three- and four-year-olds were read one of two narrative picture books designed to teach the concept of color camouflage (Ganea et al.,
Differences in book features appear to have significant effects on children's ability to extract and transfer biological information to the real world. Fantastical contexts used in stories may cue children that information presented in books is not transferrable to real-world contexts. Because children tend to err on the side of caution when reasoning about what events could really happen, children may fail to apply accurate biological information presented in fantastical stories, dismissing it as unrealistic. In contrast, anthropomorphic details in stories appear to push children's reasoning in the opposite direction—influencing children to reason about animals as similar to humans and potentially motivating them to accept inaccurate biological information about animals. This may be mediated by experience; children without extensive experience with animals may use their own personal (human) experience to help them distinguish what is realistic. Adults may help to dispel misconceptions about animals by talking with children about the characteristics portrayed in stories. In either case, realistic books may more readily support analogical transfer by portraying contexts similar to the real world and characteristics that are appropriate for transfer.
Finally, book genre has the potential to support transfer via its use of stylistic features such as language and image type. More research is needed to determine the extent to which the specificity of language used or other genre-related features support children's acquisition of biological information from picture books. Contexts that more clearly resemble reality may support both the symbolic insight needed for learning in transfer in children's early acquisition of biological facts from books (e.g., chicks eat worms) and the analogical reasoning needed for later acquisition of scientific concepts (e.g., camouflage).
The task of learning physics concepts is similar to that of learning biological concepts in many ways. First, information may require conceptual abstraction beyond lining up surface features—e.g., both natural selection and centrifugal force apply in situations that vary greatly in context. Thus, picture book features that are based on visual similarity (like pictorial realism) may be less important for supporting transfer than features that support insight into analogical contexts. However, the necessary mismatches between the fantastical details in stories and real-world contexts may make it more difficult for children to recognize similarities between the contexts, thus disrupting analogical transfer. Second, realistic and unrealistic information about both biology and physics is often mixed together in children's stories, making fantasy-reality distinctions particularly difficult. For example, in
Two very recent studies indicate that books appear to be good tools for teaching children transferrable concepts about physics. Ganea et al. (
Problem solving occurs when one wants to achieve a goal and no obvious solution occurs to the problem-solver (Mayer and Wittrock,
An interesting feature of problem-solution transfer is that is can often occur after a substantial delay. A child may not encounter a relevant real-world problem until days, weeks, or even months after reading the story. The child must recall and recognize the abstract similarities between the story problem and the problem they face that goes beyond the surface features of the two problems. For example, a story character may retrieve a ball stuck in a rafter using a broom. The child may later use a similar strategy to retrieve a ball stuck in a tree using a hockey stick.
As we discuss in more detail below, children's ability to distinguish fantasy and reality may also influence their transfer of problem solutions. Problem solutions present in fantastical stories can be relevant to the real world, and children with a better grasp of possibility may be better able to apply solutions from fantasy to the real world. Children who approach fantastical events with skepticism are unlikely to transfer solutions from these types of stories.
In problem solving tasks that can be solved with some reliance on visual similarity, pictorial realism can impact young children's transfer. Books that incorporate pictures that are more similar to real objects, like photographs, help children align book objects with their real-world referents, and transfer skills they have learned from a book. Simcock and DeLoache (
Simcock and DeLoache's (
In problem solving, however, the ability to distinguish between realistic and unrealistic information may be less important because solutions to fantastical problems are often applicable to real-world situations if deep features are considered. Even children who can appropriately distinguish fantastical portrayals may struggle to apply problem solutions optimally because their skepticism toward applying fantastical information may lead them to dismiss solutions presented in fantastical contexts even when the problem solution would apply to real-world problems.
In one study, 3- to 6-year-olds were read two “social interaction” stories (joining a friend group and taking another's perspective) and two “physical solution” stories (wrapping and stacking) featuring either human or fantastical characters (Richert et al.,
Similarly, Richert and Smith (
Similar to the pattern seen in the biological domain, fantastical contexts appear to make transferring problem solutions to real-world situations more difficult for children. In problem solution tasks, children need to identify analogical similarities between a problem presented in a book and a problem faced in the lab. Skill in fantasy-reality discrimination may support children in realizing that problem solutions in fantastical contexts may apply to real world problems. In support of this interpretation, Richert and Schlesinger (
Many popular children's characters have encountered a bully, lied, or had bad dreams. Adults may choose these books hoping they will teach children information they can use in their own daily experiences. However, adults should not assume that pre-readers readily extract the moral messages intended by authors. Even as late as third grade, children have difficulty identifying the moral themes of oral stories when asked to explicitly describe them (Narvaez et al.,
As with science learning and problem solving, children cannot rely on surface-level features to extract moral themes. As such, we might expect analogical reasoning and fantasy-reality distinction to play important roles in learning moral messages. As with problem solving, although morals presented in unrealistic contexts may be applicable to real-world situations, even children with the ability to distinguish fantasy and reality may tend not to transfer moral lessons.
In addition to the challenges discussed in other domains, learning thematic messages from books may be an additionally difficult task because children must learn to connect together the relations and events that occur across multiple story events. According to van den Broek et al. (
Larsen et al. (
There is additional evidence that human characters may be supportive for helping children identify and extract story themes. Another study, which did not involve a transfer task, found that 4- and 5-year-olds were more likely to identify the theme of a story they were read (ask permission to join a game) if it featured human characters than if they were read the same story with rabbit characters (Kotaman and Balci,
The available research suggests that characters that are, or are perceived as, similar to the child may enhance the extraction of story morals and their transfer to real-world situations. As with other domains, transfer of moral themes depends on children's ability to see the similarity between the situation in books and real-world situations. Realistic characters may be one way of supporting this connection. In addition, characters and contexts that differ greatly from real-world contexts may lead children to question which information in stories is realistic and should be transferred.
Adults and children regularly engage in joint reading with a variety of goals. In this review, we have focused on the use of books to teach children transferrable information about words, letters, science, problem solutions, and moral lessons. Through this review, a few important themes have emerged.
First, children's learning from a given picture book appears to be the result of an interaction between the particular features of the book, the type of information to be learned, and constraints on children's development in the areas we have outlined. As we have seen, certain features (e.g., fantasy) may be more disruptive in some domains (i.e., problem solving and moral lessons) than others (i.e., word and physics learning). Children's age and therefore developmental stage also affects what and whether they learn. For example, pictorial realism and manipulative features may be especially disruptive for younger children in word and letter learning where transfer can occur based on aligning surface-level features such as shape and color. In this domain the development of symbolic understanding may help in instances when mismatches between pictures and reality or distacting features interfere with transfer between book and real contexts. This same interaction between book features and development may not be as important in domains like problem solving and morality where children need to understand and transfer deeper features across situations rather than rely on surface-level features. As another example, fantastical contexts may be more detrimental for a child who has not yet worked out how to reliably separate the possible from the impossible because he/she is unlikely to accurately select transferrable information from fantastical stories. However, when children achieve a better grasp of this distinction, fantastical stories may not present as much of a barrier to learning in domains where fantasy serves as a good cue for lack of transferability.
Second, there is still much that we do not know about which features support learning from books. Each feature has been tested only a handful of times in a handful of contexts. While some features, such as realistic portrayals of animals, may be optimal for teaching biology, the reverse may be true for encouraging empathy for animals and nature. For example, children often use anthropomorphic reasoning to explain why trees and other elements of nature should be protected (Gebhard et al.,
Finally, the most supportive thing adults can do to help children learn, even more than selecting high-quality books, is to have conversations with them during reading. Adults reading books with manipulative features, be they traditional or electronic, may support children by focusing less on the hands-on features and drawing attention back to content-related talk. When it comes to choosing information for transfer, adults may use generic language to signal to children that particular information is true across contexts (Gelman et al.,
All authors developed the structure and content of the manuscript. GS and AN drafted the manuscript. All authors provided edits and feedback.
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.