The understandable process of studying by kids are listening-copying, and looking-drawing. For them, it is easier to copy everything that their parents or adult have done. For instance, the way how we are speaking, walking, looking, behaving and many more. Children are good observer with many aspect of curiosity inside their brain. As an observer, let us just consider them as some young scientists, their ability in observing something is incredible.
There is scientific prove about their incredible observation. But before we discuss there, let me tell you something. Which one will the children prefer, reading storybook or comic book?
A recent study found that the children is better to memorize and learn new lexical resource from books with one illustration or photograph or image or picture to see at a time. This statement is based on the University of Sussex’s psychologists Jessica Horst and Zoe Flack when set up an experiments to three and half years old of 36 children. The experiments involved specially authorized and designed storybooks, with few non-understandable words, called sprock. The text “sprock” was written in inverted type, with mixing of orange and yellow slingshot.
Under their observation, the researchers wanted to know which is the best pick up for children to read and memorize. In some tests, one of the researcher read the storybook showing two different images at a time. another tests, a single picture was displayed in one time. The next thing is, the children were questioned where is the location of the nonsense word “sprock”, which was illustrated in a different booklet among other unknown things or matters.
Interestingly, the children who was only shown by one picture at one time were easier to point the word sprock each time they were seen it again. By this finding, the researchers suggested that pictures are important for children and they can be for preliterate kids. The study was published in Infant and Child Development.
To be concluded, in teaching and training children about language, it is better to use photograph or illustration or image inside their reading material. It does not mean that the parents have to buy them comic book, but it can be replaced by changing the book into documentary books.