Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Head of the research project:  Larissa D'Angelo, PhD

The present study explores the reading and comprehension process experienced by children when reading picturebooks. Picturebooks, unlike illustrated albums, are literary products where text and images interact and complement each other creating a unique reading experience (Nikolajeva & Scott 2000, 2013; Sipe 1998), the mechanism of which can be understood by devising a study that analyzes various textual, visual and experiential elements. To fully comprehend the reading pattern and cognitive process of young readers, 12 third grade children aged 8, attending a bilingual Primary School in Bergamo were exposed to a corpus of picturebooks addressing two different emotions in young readers: fear of the dark and the feeling of exclusion/loneliness. Part of the material was autonomously read by children, another part was was read aloud to them. The reception of the material was recorded using mobile eye-tracking lab equipped with a Tobii Pro Nano Eye Tracker - 60 Hz (Eye-tracking bar) and iMotions Affectiva, a software able to classify emotional responses through facial analysis. The data was analyzed considering eye movements, heatmaps, Areas of Interest (AOI), Facial Coding and children’s story retellings. The hardware and software utilized showed the different phases of reading and the emotional responses to linguistic, visual and sound stimuli, providing useful educational insights and a discussion on picturebook formats.

References:

Nikolajeva, M., & Scott, C. (2013). How picturebooks work. London: Routledge.

Nikolajeva, M. & Scott, C. (2000). The dynamics of picturebook communication, Children’s Literature in Education, 31(4), 225–2239.

Sipe, Lawrence R. (1998). How picture books work: A semiotically framed theory of text-picture relationships, Children’s Literature in Education, 29(2), 97–108.