Abstract
Preschool children heard two ten-sentence stories. Each sentence was accompanied by two pictures (one of the subject and one of the object of the sentence), by a picture of the sentence’s subject, by a picture of the sentence’s object, or by no pictures. After presentation of the stories, the children answered questions requiring recall of the sentence objects. Only the two-picture illustration variation produced significantly beffer learning relative to no-picture control performance. This finding held both when children were instructed to make mental images representing the prose and when they simply listened to the text. The results are relevant both to theories of children’s imagery and to practical issues about how to illustrate children’s texts.
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This research was supported by a grant to the second author from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Digdon, N., Pressley, M. & Levin, J.R. Preschoolers’ learning when pictures do not tell the whole story. ECTJ 33, 139–145 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02769115
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02769115