The Reading Level Paradox

Why Children's Picture Books Are Less Cohesive Than Adult Books

Bibliographic Data

ID11273635
AuthorsRoberta Corrigan (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, corresponding author), John R Surber (University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee)
Year2009
Volume47
Issue1
Pages32-54
Publication date2009-12-31
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueDiscourse Processes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0163-853X • E-ISSN: 1532-6950
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/01638530902728298
OpenAlexW2154226196
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited20

Three experiments explored how pictures in award-winning children's storybooks contribute to their cohesion. In Experiment 1, one group of college students read storybooks with pictures, and another group read them with the pictures removed. Both groups answered questions inserted periodically. The source for about one half of the questions was the pictures, and the source for the remaining questions was the written text. The answers to one half of the questions from each source were explicitly contained in the immediately preceding text or pictures, and the remainder required inferences that went beyond the immediately preceding information. Not surprisingly, questions based on the pictures could not be answered without the pictures. In Experiment 2, the texts without pictures were rewritten to provide the essential storyline information that the pictures had supplied. Cohesion of both the original and rewritten texts was assessed with Coh-Metrix indexes. The changes resulted in increased cohesion for referential and semantic information, with relatively little change in syntactic cohesion indexes or readability levels. In Experiment 3, the pattern of college students' responses to questions on the revised texts was very similar to responses in Experiment 1 to the texts with pictures. Notes 1The Flesch–Kincaid grade-level formula (Klare, 1974–1975) is FK = (.39 × ASL) + (11.8 × ASW) – 15.59, where FK is the Flesch–Kincaid grade level, ASL is the average sentence length (the number of words divided by the number of sentences), and ASW is the average number of syllables per word (the number of syllables divided by the number of words)

Cohesion (chemistry · Linguistics · Readability · Reading (process · Reading comprehension · Sentence · Computer Science · Psychology · Reading and Literacy Development · Second Language Acquisition and Learning · Text Readability and Simplification

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