The increasing availability of electronic storybooks (e-books) for preschoolers has raised
a variety of concerns regarding their potential to distract children and diminish prereading
skill acquisition as well as change the nature of the parent-child interaction during
book reading. Alternatively, because e-books are delivered via popular mobile devices, it
has been suggested that they might motivate children to read more, allow children to
benefit from built-in reading aids, and increase their focused attention to story details.
The current study investigated the utility of e-books for facilitating early literacy skills in
a sample of 79 3 to 5-year-olds. Children read an e-book and paper storybook with an
experimenter and were asked story comprehension questions following each book
reading. Children then completed two measures of executive function (Day-Night Task
and Digit Span Task) as well a measure of receptive vocabulary. Dependent measures
were children’s (1) recall of factual and inferred story detail (2) duration of looking to
book, adult, and off-task during reading, (3) engagement and communication during story
reading. ANOVAs revealed that: (1) there was a significant increase in recall of story
information across age, but no difference as a function of story format (2) all children
were highly attentive during story reading but looked relatively more at the e-book than
the paper book and more at the adult during the paper book reading (3) children were
engaged with and communicated about both stories, but more so with the e-book than the
paper book. The results of the current study suggest that carefully designed e-books
support story comprehension similarly to paper books and also increase children’s
engagement and communication during book reading
