The study by the American Psychological Association aimed to show how much young children learn from picture book interactions and how the nature of the pictures for children might influence how well they learn from them.
Judy Deloache of the University of Virginia, who led the study, along with Gabrielle Simcock from the University of Queensland, Australia, said, 'Very young children do extend information from the pages of a book to the real world and the more realistic the pictures, the more transfer there is. It means that for books designed to teach very young children new information, learning will be more successful with highly realistic pictures.'
The study involved 132 children aged 18 months, 24 months and 30 months and their ability to learn how to construct a simple rattle from a picture-book reading. They were given books containing colour photographs and coloured pencil drawings that were reproductions of the photograph. The children were more able to follow directions given in books with photographs than illustrations.
But children's author and language consultant Opal Dunn said, 'Children learn simple things by doing, not reading, and later transfer this learning to other things. The researchers seem to be using the books like they are textbooks. Children easily interpret illustrated books - this is visual literacy, which has a knock-on effect on creativity.'
Get the Picture: The Effects of Iconicity Research can be downloaded at www.apa.org.
