"Press, Swipe, and Read: Do Interactive Features Facilitate Engagement and Learning with e-Books?"

American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting
Theme: Leveraging Educational Research in a “Post-Truth” Era: Multimodal Narratives to Democratize Evidence
Toronto, Canada
April 5-9, 2019

Title: Press, Swipe, and Read: Do Interactive Features Facilitate Engagement and Learning with e-Books? (Poster)
Session: Early Childhood Poster Session I
Authors: Ying Xu, Joanna C. Yau, Stephanie Reich

​Abstract: To date, many children’s e-books contain hotspots – interactive areas children can press to receive immediate auditory or visual feedback. This study assesses whether children’s (N = 76, age 3-5) interactions with hotspots elicit their engagement with reading and how such interactions are related to their comprehension of the story when they use an e-book independently. In terms of reading engagement, our results suggest that when children engage with reading through interacting with hotspots, they demonstrate enhanced emotional engagement and more sustained visual attention. In terms of reading comprehension, hotspot interactions can enhance children’s memorization of story content relevant to the hotspot. These findings inform several implications for the design and use of touchscreen media in early childhood.