Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Becoming a proficient reader is a critical skill that supportsfuture learning. Toward the end of the primary grades,reading becomes increasingly automatized, and children beginto transition from learning-to-read to reading-to-learn. Yet,the design of beginning reader books may be suboptimal fornovice readers. Colorful illustrations that contain irrelevantinformation (i.e., seductive details) presented in closeproximity to the text may increase attentional competitionbetween these sources of information; thus, hamperingdecoding and reading comprehension. Study 1 examines thishypothesis by experimentally manipulating components of thebook design (e.g., presence/absence of seductive details) andinvestigating its effect on attention and reading performancein first grade students. In Study 2, we conduct an analysis inwhich we identify common design features in books forbeginning readers and examine the prevalence of designfeatures that were found to tax attention in Study 1 and inprior research. Collectively this work identifies an importantopportunity in which instructional materials can be optimizedto better support children as they learn-to-read.