Pictures and Young children's Prose Learning: A Supplementary Report

Abstract

Abstract. Facilitative effects of illustration activity on prose learning have been previously established for young (first grade) children in a listening task. The present study tested for illustration effects with passages of varying complexity and length. Positive effects were found for long and short passages (100 vs. 50 words) that were either simple (one locational setting) or complex (two settings). The pattern of results for cued and free recall suggested that illustration facilitates individual sentence comprehension more than passage integration for these children. Analysis of subjectconstructed illustrations showed a clear relationship between illustration content and passage recall.In a recent study, Lesgold, Levin, Shimron, and Guttman (1975) showed that young children (first graders) remember more of an orally-presented story when it is accompanied by visual illustrations. Moreover, equivalent facilitation was observed when the child constructed the illustration (using a background scene and cutout objects) and when the experimenter did. (When the child had to select the particular cutouts (s)he needed from a larger pool that included irrelevant materials, illustration had either no effect or else inhibited performance.) a

The Promise and Practice of Learner-Generated Drawing: Literature Review and Synthesis

“…In a similar study, Lesgold et al (1977) replicated these results. Specifically, Lesgold et al (1977) reported a significant positive correlation between the accuracy of drawings and the number of story propositions recalled.…”

“…Comparing propositions that were either inaccurately drawn or omitted, inaccurately represented propositions were more likely to be included in story recalls. Although Lesgold et al (1977) used spoken rather than written language, these findings restrict the practitioner claim that drawing can be an easier expressional format than symbolic language (e.g., Hubbard, 1987;Karnowski, 1986). Apparently, some learners have difficulty accurately drawing even when content is understood (Lansing, 1981).…”

“…Specifically, Lesgold et al (1977) reported a significant positive correlation between the accuracy of drawings and the number of story propositions recalled. In this study, however, drawings were examined to determine the relationship between what was specifically expressed in the drawing and what was specifically expressed in the free recalls.…”

“…Greene (1989), for example, demonstrated that participants performed better on posttests when drawings accurately depicted text Greene (1989) permitted participants to use the drawn representation at the time of the posttest, these positive correlations are not surprising. More stringent tests of this hypothesis are provided by research in which participants constructed drawings during study but did not have them available when tested (e.g., Lesgold et al, 1977;Linden and Wittrock, 1981). In a study by Lesgold et al (1975, Exp.…”

How do young adults read directions with and without pictures?

“…Peeck found that for children reading illustrated text with points of conflict between picture and text there was no difference in retention between groups reading illustrated and non-illustrated versions of the text. Lesgold, DeGood and Levin (1977) found that illustrations facilitated prose learning for first graders. One study done with adults, by Findahl (Note 2), attempted to d termine whether pictures would improve memory for news items.…”