National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 637616, Singapore.
Singapore-ETH Centre, Singapore 138602, Singapore.
J Exp Child Psychol. 2022 Mar;215:105327. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2021.105327. Epub 2021 Dec 8.
This study examined Mandarin-English bilingual children's visual attention over repetitive readings of Mandarin enhanced digital books and static books as well as the effects visual attention has on story retelling. We assigned 89 4- and 5-year-old preschoolers in Singapore to one of three reading conditions: (a) digital books with visual and auditory enhancements, (b) digital books with only auditory enhancements, and (c) static digital books with neither visual nor auditory enhancements. We presented three stories to the children in four sessions over 2 weeks, traced their visual attention with an eye tracker, and examined their story retelling after the first and fourth readings. The results demonstrated that the digital books with visual and auditory enhancements maintained greater visual attention from children compared with that from children in the other two conditions across the four repetitive readings. Moreover, children's bilingual language proficiency significantly modulates the conditional effects of attention. Children with higher bilingual proficiency in the visual and auditory enhancements condition outperformed their peers in the other two conditions in terms of visual attention across most readings. However, for the children with lower bilingual proficiency, the digital books with auditory and visual enhancements only outperformed the static condition but not the auditory enhanced condition. Children with lower language proficiency maintained their attention at a relatively high level across the repetitive readings in the enhanced digital book conditions but demonstrated significantly decreased visual attention in the static digital book condition. Because children with better visual attention and higher bilingual proficiency retold the stories significantly better, the results indicate that influencing visual attention helps to improve story comprehension.
本研究考察了普通话-英语双语儿童在重复阅读普通话增强型数字图书和静态图书时的视觉注意力，以及视觉注意力对故事复述的影响。我们将 89 名 4 至 5 岁的新加坡学前儿童分为三组阅读条件：（a）具有视觉和听觉增强功能的数字图书，（b）仅具有听觉增强功能的数字图书，以及（c）既没有视觉也没有听觉增强功能的静态数字图书。我们在两周内的四个会议上向孩子们展示了三个故事，使用眼动仪追踪他们的视觉注意力，并在第一次和第四次阅读后检查他们的故事复述。结果表明，与其他两种条件相比，具有视觉和听觉增强功能的数字图书在四次重复阅读中都能保持儿童更高的视觉注意力。此外，儿童的双语语言能力显著调节了注意力的条件效应。在视觉和听觉增强条件下具有更高双语能力的儿童在大多数阅读中在视觉注意力方面均优于其他两种条件下的同龄人。然而，对于双语能力较低的儿童，具有视听增强功能的数字图书仅优于静态条件，而不优于听觉增强条件。在增强型数字图书条件下，具有较低语言能力的儿童在重复阅读中保持相对较高的注意力水平，但在静态数字图书条件下注意力显著下降。由于具有更好视觉注意力和更高双语能力的儿童复述故事的能力明显更好，因此研究结果表明，影响视觉注意力有助于提高故事理解。
