Narrative comprehension and engagement with e-books vs. paper-books in autism spectrum condition

Abstract

Background and aims: Children with autism spectrum condition often have specific difficulties with narrative comprehension, a skill which has a strong association with both concurrent and longitudinal reading comprehension. A better understanding of narrative comprehension skills in autism spectrum condition has the potential to provide insight into potential later reading comprehension difficulties and inform early targeted intervention. In the current study, the main objective was to investigate how differences in the medium of story presentation (paper-book vs. e-book) and differences in story narration (adult narration vs. in-app narration) would influence narrative comprehension in general, and between groups (autism spectrum condition and a receptive language-matched control group). We were also interested in how task engagement (visual attention and communication) differed between group and conditions and whether task engagement was related to narrative comprehension. Method: Forty-two children with autism spectrum condition and 42 typically developing children were read a story either via a paper-book or an e-book with interactive and multimedia features. The e-book was either narrated by the experimenter (adult narrated iPad condition) or narrated by an in-app voiceover (e-book narrated iPad condition). Children's behaviour during storybook reading was video recorded and coded for engagement (visual attention and communication). They then completed two measures of narrative comprehension: multiple-choice questions (measuring recall of literal information) and a picture ordering task (measuring global story structure). Results: Contrary to predictions, we did not find any significant group or condition differences on either measure of narrative comprehension, and both groups demonstrated a similar level of narrative comprehension across the three conditions. We found differences in engagement between conditions for both groups, with greater visual attention in the e-book conditions compared to the paper-book condition. However, visual attention only significantly correlated with narrative comprehension for the typically developing group. Conclusion: Overall, this study suggests that children with autism spectrum condition are just as able as languagematched peers to comprehend a narrative from storybooks. Presenting a story on an iPad e-book compared to a paperbook does not influence narrative comprehension, nor does adult narration of the story compared to in-app narration. However, on-task engagement is linked to narrative comprehension in typically developing children. Implications: Taken together, our findings suggest that e-books may be more successful than paper-based mediums at encouraging visual attention towards the story, but no better at supporting narrative comprehension and eliciting communication.

A Comparison of Children’s Reading on Paper Versus Screen: A Meta-Analysis

“…The focus of the meta-analysis was on studies that reported quantitative comparisons of reading a paper and digital version of the same story. We therefore excluded (1) studies without a control group (e.g., Klop et al, 2018;Messier & Wood, 2015) and case studies (e.g., Boyle et al, 2017, making use of a single-case multiple baseline across participants design); (2) studies that included comparisons between paper on the one hand and video, an audio story, or a film on the other hand were excluded (e.g., Meringoff, 1980); (3) apart from studies just focusing on behavior during book reading (e.g., Moody et al, 2010;Rees et al, 2017) we did not include studies targeting basic reading skills such as letter knowledge or phonemic awareness (e.g., Evans et al, 2017;Segal-Drori et al, 2010;Willoughby et al, 2015) or recognition of kana characters (e.g., Masataka, 2014); (4) we also excluded studies targeting participants older than 8 years (e.g., Connor et al, 2019) and participants with Cochlear implants (e.g., Messier & Wood, 2015) or diagnosed with autism (e.g., Wainwright et al, 2020).…”

Textos Digitales y Comprensión Lectora en Primaria: Una Revisión de Literatura

“…En estudiantes con discapacidad y dificultades de aprendizaje, Wainwright et al (2020) determinaron que presentar una historia en un libro electrónico, en comparación con uno de papel, no influye en la comparación narrativa de los estudiantes con espectro autista; lo que implica que poseen capacidades similares a los estudiantes de desarrollo típico. Lo mismo sucedió con el estudio de Zikl et al (2015), quienes encontraron que el uso de la fuente Open Dyslectic, diseñada específicamente para alumnos con dislexia, no condujo a ninguna mejora notable en la velocidad de lectura o tasas de error en comparación con la fuente de uso común.…”

“…Solo el 10% de las investigaciones vinculan estudiantes de primaria y secundaria simultáneamente. El 6% de los artículos destacaron la existencia de discapacidad y dificultades de aprendizaje en sus sujetos de estudio, como es el caso de Zikl et al (2015) que presenta estudiantes con dislexia, Blom et al (2019) población con problemas de audición o lenguaje, y Wainwright et al (2020) en personas diagnosticadas dentro del espectro autista.…”

“…Algunos estudios hicieron comparaciones directas entre las bondades del texto digital y el texto impreso en la comprensión lectora (Alisaari et al, 2018;Calle & Gómez, 2020;Danaei et al, 2020;Goodwin et al, 2020;Long & Szabo, 2016;Wainwright et al, 2020). Otros contrastaron los efectos del texto digital lineal y el texto digital con hipertextos en la lectura (Blom et al, 2019;Soria, 2015aSoria, , 2015b.…”

Development of Knowledgeable and Resourceful Learners

“…1) establishes conditions for students to become familiar with information, perceive and understand information and construct knowledge. A flexible curriculum, means, application of information technologies promotes a better understanding of read texts (Brand & Dalton, 2012) and visualised narration (Cohn, 2020), which serve as scaffolds for information accessibility and the management of cognitive processes in cases of dyslexia, autism spectrum and other disorders (Rosita et al, 2020;Wainwright et al, 2020;Hartmann, 2015;Meo, 2008).…”