A page overloaded with photos harms children’s learning to read

Reading is the gateway to learning. However, in the United States, a third of elementary school students do not have a sufficient level of reading. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania (USA) have found that the design of reading materials affects literacy development. The pages are overloaded with superfluous images, which distracts the child’s attention and diminishes his understanding of the content. The results of their study were published on September 21 in the journal NatureCommunications.

An eye-tracker to monitor children’s attention

Typical children’s book design often includes engaging, colorful illustrations to help define the characters and story setting, provide context for the text, and motivate them. Designed to capture attention and support the text, these images would actually have the opposite effect on children. Extraneous images can distract the reader’s eyes from the text and disrupt the concentration needed to understand the story so “that‘learning to read is hard work for many children”, says Anna Fisher, associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study.

Researchers have tried to figure out how to optimize children’s reading experience as they become more fluent readers. In the study, 60 students, aged 6 to 8, read a book designed for reading practice at their level. Each child read the same book. The team used a wearable eye-tracker to monitor the number of times the child’s gaze moved from text to images on the page. To develop the simplified version of the book, the researchers asked a group of adults to identify relevant images for the text. To differentiate, foreign images were defined as entertaining images but not essential to understanding the story. For the simplified version, the researchers kept images that 90% of adult participants thought were relevant illustrations, and all other illustrations were removed.

Improve educational materials

While the time children spent on each page in both versions was similar, the researchers found that almost all children reading the simplified version had lower eye gaze and higher reading comprehension scores than the simplified version. text of the commercial version of the book. Children who are more likely to look away from the text benefited the most from the simplified version of the book. “During these primary school years, children are in a period of transition where they are increasingly expected to read independently but even more as a result of stay-at-home orders. , as children use technology with less in-person guidance from teachers”, describes Cassondra Eng, one of the authors of the study.

According to the researchers, these results highlight ways to improve the design of educational materials, especially for beginning readers. By simply limiting superfluous illustrations, children can have an easier time concentrating and better reading comprehension as a result. “It’s exciting because we can design materials based on learning theories that can be most helpful to children and enrich their experiences with technology.”, rejoices Cassondra Egg.