Young children's science learning from narrative books: The role of text cohesion and caregivers' extratextual talk

One way to support young children's factual learning is through shared book reading (reading books with a knowledgeable other). Many books that teach factual content are narrative in structure, in which factual content is embedded within a fictional storyline. However, there are gaps in our understanding of factors influencing children's factual learning from narrative books. In this experiment, 38 caregivers and their 4- to 5-year-old children from the Southeastern United States participated. Each caregiver read to their child two narrative books on science concepts. The books varied in their levels of cohesion (e.g., drawing connections between textual elements and providing details and comparisons). We coded caregivers' extratextual talk while reading for the extent to which it emphasized science information (informational highlighted talk) or went beyond the text to provide further related information (informational elaborative talk). Children's recall of the books' science and story content was tested in free and probed recall formats. We found that children had higher recall of the story content, even though caregivers emphasized the science content through their highlighted extratextual talk. Caregivers used more elaborative extratextual talk with the low cohesion book, perhaps as compensation for the book's lack of cohesion. However, children's recall of the science content was most strongly predicted by the books' cohesion and caregivers' highlighted extratextual talk. These results emphasize the important role that books' textual features and caregivers' extratextual talk during book reading have on young children's factual learning from narrative books.