Treiman Rebecca, Rosales Nicole, Kessler Brett
Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis.
Writ Syst Res. 2016;8(1):120-132. doi: 10.1080/17586801.2015.1074058. Epub 2015 Oct 9.
Children begin to learn about the characteristics of print well before formal literacy instruction begins. Reading to children can expose them to print and help them learn about its characteristics. This may be especially true if the print is visually salient, for studies suggest that prereaders pay more attention to such print than to print that is visually less salient. To shed light on the characteristics of the print that US children see in books, especially those characteristics that may contribute to visual salience, we report a quantitative analysis of 73 books that were chosen to be representative of those seen by preschoolers. We found that print that is visually salient due to color, variation, and other features tends to be more common on the covers of books than in the interiors. It also tends to be more common in recently published books than in older books. Even in recent books, however, the print is much less visually salient than the accompanying pictures. Many studies have examined the behavior of adults and children during shared reading, but little research has examined the characteristics of books themselves. Our results provide quantitative information about this topic for one set of characteristics in books for young US children.
在正式的读写教学开始之前，孩子们就开始学习有关印刷品的特征了。给孩子们读书能让他们接触到印刷品，并帮助他们了解其特征。如果印刷品在视觉上很突出，情况可能尤其如此，因为研究表明，学前儿童对这类印刷品的关注要多于视觉上不那么突出的印刷品。为了阐明美国儿童在书籍中看到的印刷品的特征，尤其是那些可能有助于视觉突出性的特征，我们报告了对73本被选为能代表学龄前儿童所看书籍的定量分析。我们发现，由于颜色、变化和其他特征而在视觉上突出的印刷品在书籍封面比在书内更常见。它在最近出版的书籍中也比在旧书中更常见。然而，即使在最近出版的书籍中，印刷品在视觉上也远不如配图突出。许多研究考察了成人和儿童在共读时的行为，但很少有研究考察书籍本身的特征。我们的研究结果为美国幼儿书籍中的一组特征提供了有关这一主题的定量信息。
