Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Two experiments tested how the number of illustrations instorybooks influences 3.5-year-old children’s word learningfrom shared reading. In Experiment 1, children encounteredstories with either two illustrations, one illustration or onelarge illustration (in the control group) per spread. Childrenlearned significantly fewer words when they had to find thereferent within two illustrations presented at the same time. InExperiment 2 a gesture was added to guide children’sattention to the correct page in the two illustrations condition.Children who saw two illustrations with a guiding gesturelearned words as well as children who had seen only oneillustration per spread. Results are discussed in terms of thecognitive load of word learning from storybooks.