Picture books composed of sequential pictures with narrative characteristics are ubiquitous for children’s early reading. However, few studies investigated how children process sequential pictures, especially about the abstract visual narrative structure. The current study explored the development of visual narrative structure processing in 5-year-olds to 9-year-olds. We mainly focus on three research questions: (1) What’s the developmental characteristics of visual narrative monolayer structure processing? (2) What’s the developmental characteristics of visual narrative hierarchical structure processing and how does semantic cue affect it? (3) How do the factors affect visual narrative monolayer and hierarchical structure processing? Three studies were designed accordingly to answer these questions.
The first study included one experiment (e.g., Experiment 1). We investigated the development of children’s visual narrative monolayer structure processing through ordering sequential pictures task. The results showed that the processing performance of visual narrative monolayer structure improved linearly with age increasing. It showed a relatively stable developmental status during age 5-6 while it had significant improvement at age 7 and age 8 respectively.
The second study included two experiments (e.g., Experiment & Experiment 3), which adopted a task of dividing visual narrative hierarchical structure. In experiment 2, children’s developmental characteristics of visual narrative hierarchical structure processing were investigated. The results showed that the processing performance of visual narrative hierarchical structure improved linearly with age increasing. It showed a relatively stable developmental status during age 5-7 while had a significant improvement at age 8. In experiment 3, the semantic cues were manipulated that new character or new location information of the pictures were at the visual narrative structure boundary. The results showed that children could be aware and use the semantic cues to divide visual narrative bilayer structure better with age increasing. Comparing with no semantic cues condition, children’s performance was better at two kinds of semantic cues condition. Moreover, children’s strategies for using different semantic cues showed different developmental characteristics. When there was only new location cue, children showed sensitivity to it and better performance comparing with no semantic cues condition at age 6. When there was only new character cue, they showed better performance comparing with no semantic cues at age 7. Comparing with only new character cue condition, they showed better performance at only new location cue condition at age 8. They demonstrated the same good performance in conditions with only new location cue and only new character cue.
The third study also included two experiments (e.g., Experiment 4 & Experiment 5). In experiment 4, we explored the relationship among factors like children’s enthusiasm in reading, family environment, picture reading experience and visual narrative monolayer structure processing. The results showed that children’s age, intelligence and watching animate cartoon time per week positively predicted visual narrative monolayer structure processing. In experiment 5, we explored the relationship among factors like children’s enthusiasm in reading, family environment, picture reading experience, visual narrative structure processing and visual narrative hierarchical structure processing. The results showed that that intelligence, drawing time per week and visual narrative monolayer structure processing positively predicted visual narrative hierarchical structure processing.
The present study investigated children’s developmental characteristics of visual narrative structure processing and the factors that influenced the development. The results can enrich the theoretical research of children's early picture book reading and have important implications in picture book reading instruction and picture books creative writing.
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