The focus of the proposed research is the process by which young children acquire and extend new knowledge from picture book experiences, with the goal of identifying factors that facilitate or impede that process. Parents and preschool teachers assume that young children learn useful information from the books to which they are exposed and assume also that they generalize that information beyond the pages of the book. Surprisingly, little research has examined these basic assumptions. One goal of the project is to examine the effect of certain physical characteristics that are common in books designed and marketed for young children (e.g., how realistic the pictures in the books are and whether it matters if information is presented in an everyday context or a fantasy context). A second goal concerns the extent to which features that are known to facilitate or interfere with learning generally in young children (e.g., analogies and complex elements that can be physically manipulated) affect learning and generalization from books. A third goal is to examine book-centered interactions between parents and their preschool children to see how parents use books to communicate information to their children, with a particular focus on assessing the extent to which parents encourage generalization to the real world. Because joint book reading has the potential to serve as an excellent source of early knowledge about scientific concepts, these questions will be addressed in the context of children learning about various biological domains, beginning with animal-environment relations. The results of the proposed research should have clear and important implications for the selection and design of picture books to serve educational goals. Because young children in America are so frequently involved in picture book interactions, improvement in the educational potential of the books available in homes and preschools could have a broader impact across the social spectrum.
