Looking at children’s books to fill gaps in the science of reading

Conference item : Presentation

The science of reading is rightly rooted in a cognitive-linguistic view of literacy learning. Even so, current theorising about learning to read is skewed because the evidence base is yet to be informed by most of the world’s languages. Two practical propositions could be a starting point to broaden the evidence base: first, the setting up of child-directed print corpora in these languages and second, the mapping of the psycholinguistic properties of such corpora. The opportunity comes from the growing numbers of book titles in languages traditionally underrepresented in the publishing industry. We find that when such child-directed print corpora are mindful of the coverage statistics of book levels and book types, a developmental catalogue of real-world print encounters can be drawn up. These include under-theorised architectural principles of writing systems and language features at the level of phonology, morphology and syntax. We conclude that the boost needed to identify and fill the gaps in current accounts of literacy development could come from local children’s books.

Authors: Nag, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publication date: 2023-01-06
• Acceptance date: 2022-10-06
• Event title: Psychonomic Society Symposium: Cognition in the “real-world”: How, Why and What next? @ Experimental Psychology Society Meeting (EPS 2023)
• Event location: London
• Event website: https://www.psychonomic.org/page/2023symposiumEPS
• Event start date: 2023-01-06
• Event end date: 2023-01-06
• Language: English
• Subtype: Presentation