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Weaving Chains of Affect and Cognition: A Young Child's Understanding of CD-ROM Talking Books Linda D. Labbo and Melanie R. Kuhn Journal of Literacy Research 2000 32: 187 DOI: 10.1080/10862960009548073 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jlr.sagepub.com/content/32/2/187
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WEAVING CHAINS OF AFFECT AND COGNITION: A YOUNG CHILD'S UNDERSTANDING OF CD-ROM TALKING BOOKS Linda D. Labbo UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
Melanie R. Kuhn RUTGERS UNIVERSITY
This qualitative case study employed Wittrock's Generative Learning Model to examine in-depth one kindergarten child's comprehension when reading considerate and inconsiderate CD-ROM talking books in a classroom computer center. A CD-ROM talking book consists of a story told through multimedia modes of information that has been digitized on aCD.Considerate CD-ROM talking books are those that include multimedia effects that are congruent with and integral to the story. InconsiderateCD-ROMtalkingbooks are those that include multimedia effects that are incongruent with or incidental to the story. Findings indicate that considerateCD-ROMtalking books supported the child's understanding and retelling of the story and involved meaning-making processes that wove together affective responses, cognitive processes, and metacognitive activity; however, inconsiderate CD-ROM talking books resulted in the child's inability to retell the story in a cohesive way and fostered passive viewing. Implications for research and practice are drawn.
J LR V. 32 NO. 2 2000 PP. I87-2IO
ROBERTO HAS YAWNED, GIGGLED, asked
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questions, made predictions, repeated dialogue, stretched, rubbed his neck, pointed, sang, danced, and clicked his way through a story he has encountered on the screens of a CDROM talking book on the computer in his kindergarten classroom. A CD-ROM talking book consists of a story told through multimedia modes of information that has been digitized on a CD. He has been at it for well over an hour, and as researchers we are amazed at this 5-year-old student's persistence. We wonder what sense he has been able to make of a complex tale that has been told through a series of screens involving interplay of the narration, highlighted text, illustration, animation, sound effects, and music of the CD-ROM talking book. Moreover, we wonder howhe has made sense of all of the features of this digital book in an interactive play mode, and if he has been able to understand one feature in particular, namely a succession of animated events that seem to stray from the content of the story that was told in the book version of the story. For example, among other multimedia effects, he has watched an animated episode of a batch of chocolate chip cookies come to life and sing a song in the kitchen and another episode of a monster eating a box of raisins in the bedroom, events that have little or nothing to do with the plot. In other words, we wonder if he has benefited from his time at the computer in ways expected by his teacher, who indicated in an interview that she hopes the CD-ROM talking-book version of the story will reinforce his understanding of the structure and literary elements of stories as they are written in books. Therefore, the purpose of this study was threefold: (a) to characterize the relation of interactive features of CD-ROM talking books to the story, (b) to conduct a case study of a child's meaning-making processes during interactive CD-ROM talking-book reading,and (c) to analyze that child's retellings of CD-ROM talking books.
Review of Related Literature: The Potential Benefits of CD-ROM Talking Books Over the previous two decades, we have come to understand that many engaging, effective, and meaningful opportunities for young children to develop foundational concepts about print-based literacy in the early childhood classroom revolve around their encounters with books (CochranSmith, 1984; Dickinson & Keebler, 1989; Holdaway, 1982; Lamme, 1987; Teale & Martinez, 1989). Although research in this area has been thorough and productive, the recent infusion of computers in early childhood classrooms (Becker, 1991; Morsund, 1994) now makes it possible for us to gain additional insights into young children's opportunities for print-based literacy development while interacting with a new media for telling stories,
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the CD-ROM talking book, CD-ROM talking books present a story that consists of the conventional literary elements of a story: characters, location, time, problem, goal, events, character development, resolution, theme (Mandler & Johnson, 1977). These elements are typically found in a sequential presentation of screens, much like the pages in a conventional book. However, after each screen of the story has been presented, many CD-ROM talking books provide a play mode that provides interactive opportunities through multimedia features (Hales & Rüssel, 1995; Miles, 1992). Theoretically, it can be argued that, due to the interactivity of CD-ROM talking books, young children's understanding might be mediated, with the computer serving as an appropriate electronic scaffold (McKenna, 1998). Thus, CD-ROM talking books may support young children's printbased, traditional notions of emerging literacy development (Kahn, 1997, Labbo, Reinking, McKenna, in press; McKenna, Reinking, & Labbo, in press; Medwell, 1998). McKenna (1998) noted that many CD-ROM talking books embody features that adhere to Salomon, Globerson, and Guterman's (1989) criteria for effective software: (a) modeling of fluent reading, (b) stimulation of cognitive processes, and (c) guidance. For example, CD-ROM talking books offer a model of fluent, expressive reading aloud of the text as it appears on each screen. Children are furnished with digital guidance •that may focus their attention on print, as when words or phrases are highlighted linearly as text is read aloud. It is possible that as children attend to highlighted text they will come to understand conventions of print. There maybe opportunities for the stimulation of cognitive processes when children select multimedia features of the storybook during the play, or interactive, mode. For example, children may have unique opportunities to understand a character's state of mind when animation augments cues provided in text (e.g., The text states that Arthur is worried about how he will be able to handle the large amount of homework his new teacher requires, and subsequent animation shows him dressed in a prisoner uniform, tugging on a ball and chain; Brown, 1994). However, little is currently known about the thinking that children engage in when interacting with multimedia features of CD-ROM talking books. A few studies conducted over the previous decade have offered mixed results about the benefits of CD-ROM talking books for various populations of young children, particularly in regard to their ability to read and understand conventional printed stories. Previous studies indicated that CD-ROM talking books improved the story comprehension and word recognition of elementary school readers who read below grade level (Lewin, 1995; Olson, Foltz, & Wise, 1986). Other research has suggested that CD-ROM talking books allow children to select a comfortable pace for
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proceeding through a story, spend a longer time enjoying a story than during a teacher read-aloud, make story predictions (Medwell, 199 6), and use higher-order thinking skills such as drawing conclusions or inferences when discussing the story (Chu, 1995). Medwell (1998) found that digital stories had little effect on children's word recognition without illustrations, animated segments, and voiced cues. However, these studies have not addressed how unique interactive features of CD-ROM talking books may contribute to children's print-based literacy development. Additionally, few studies have attempted to characterize features of CD-ROM talking books that may or may not support children's traditional, print-based literacy development and meaning-making processes. Several studies have delved into the contributions of providing animation and the pronunciation of words in CD-ROM talking books with regard to young children's opportunities for literacy development. These studies offer promising directions for continued research in this area. For example, in a series of studies on K - I children's use of specially designed electronic books, McKenna and Watkins (1994,1996) found that children's sight-word acquisition was enhanced when they accessed pronunciations of words; however, when phonics cues (i.e., hints, decoding by analogy) were embedded in the CD-ROM talking book, children's sight-word acquisition was not enhanced. Burrell and Trushell (1997) analyzed a CD-ROM talking book for evidence of gender stereotyping and noted briefly that many interactive features of the program were either incidental or supplemental to the story. Okolo and Hayes (1996) reported that a group of second-grade poor readers and a group of their learning-disabled peers found animation in CD-ROM talking books to be motivating. However, they speculated that the children may have had difficulty comprehending the story, because the animation, which was inconsistent with the story, seemed to be distracting. Findings from these studies raise interesting directions for additional research that examines young children's meaning-making processes as they interact with the animation and word-pronunciation features of CD-ROM talking books.
Method and Findings In this section, we discuss the method and the findings related to three phases of the study. Because findings from one phase informed how we conducted the subsequent phases of the study, we report on the methods and findings as they unfolded. The first phase describes the theoretical framework, methods we employed, and the findings related to a content feature analysis of CD-ROM talking books. The second phase describes a case study of one kindergarten child's interactions with the two types of
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CD-ROM talking books we identified during phase 1. The third phase describes the case-study child's comprehension of story as indicated in electronic retellings of the two CD-ROM talking books. Phase 1: Analyzing CD-ROM Talking Books In this section, we discuss the framework that guided phase i of the study, how we conducted the content analysis, and the findings that informed phase 2 of the study. As we considered how to approach answering our question about how to characterize the relationship of CD-ROM talkingbook animation features to the story, we drew on research related to the relationship between the clarity of writing in texts and students' comprehension. Shannon, Kameenui, and Baumann (1988) noted that children's comprehension of narratives, remembering story events and the casual links that tie those events together is dependent on the clarity of the writing. In other words, how an author or illustrator presents thoughts, feelings, and values in the narrative and illustrations affects children's abilities to make inferences. Armbruster and Anderson (1981,1984) offered the construct of considerate text, a construct that postulates that not all contentarea texts are written in ways that support students' comprehension. They explained that content-area texts may be supportive or nonsupportive of comprehension in terms of structure (i.e., Is the discourse structure suited for the content?), audience appropriateness (i.e., Are the words and concepts likely to be understood by the audience?), coherence (i.e., Does the arrangement of ideas make the relationship among ideas clear?), or unity (i.e., Is the text written in a way that is not distracting and that achieves one purpose at a time?). Coherence of text - the clarity of writing and congruity across structural elements - is often viewed as a key element in fostering children's comprehension. Considerate text has been of primary importance in many intermediate-level classrooms where children are reading to learn information. Britton, Gulgoz, and Glynn (1993) noted that text for intermediate-level readers may be made more considerate when they are either rewritten with audience needs in mind or when supplemental aids are included (e.g., advance organizers, descriptive headings, summaries, etc.). For purposes of this study, we employed the construct of considerate text as a springboard to our own thinking. We wanted to find out if the way stories are told in CD-ROM talkingbooks is considerate, assisting young readers in following and remembering the story, or inconsiderate, not assisting readers in following and remembering the story. Considerateness or inconsiderateness has been of less concern in kindergarten classrooms, because young children, who cannot yet read independently, are typically
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read to. Therefore, it is the teacher who directly encounters, interprets, and ultimately mediates inconsiderateness (e.g., by offsetting lack of clarity, lack of cohesiveness). That is, it is a teacher who helps the students maneuver purposefully through a maze of text, illustrations, unfamiliar vocabulary, amount of text on the page, and concepts that may be difficult for children. Teachers do so as they socially co-construct shared story meaning (Cochran-Smith, 1984; Dickinson & Keebler, 1989) in ways that foster children's ability to understand story structure (Mandler & Johnson, i977)> comprehend stories (Dickinson & Smith, 1994), and learn about conventions of print (Clay, 1993). When understood from a sociocognitive perspective (Vygotsky, 1978), the style (Martinez & Teale, 1993) or way a teacher guides discussion and surrounds the words and illustrations of a book with social interactions makes reading a book a powerful instructional activity (Heath, 1983; Meyer, Stahl, Wardrop, & Linn, 1994; Teale, 1986) that creates an effective scaffold (Bruner, 1978) for children's literary development. We designed our content analysis of interactive CD-ROM talking books to help us determine whether CD-ROM talking books may be characterized as either considerate or inconsiderate. In these terms, which are associated with reading conventional printed texts, we considered anything that was related to the story structure to be considerate and anything that was not related to the story structure to be inconsiderate. For purposes of this study, we defined story structure as including all aspects of a story, such as characters, location, time, problem, goal, story events, resolution, and theme (Mandler & Johnson, 1977). CD-ROM talking-book content analysis andfindings.We selected two CDROM talking books, Arthur's Teacher Trouble (Brown,i994) and Stellaluna (Cannon, 199 6), that we believe represent differences in the way the stories are presented using multimedia digital features. Arthur's Teacher Trouble relates the story of a young aardvark and his friends as they learn to deal with a demanding teacher. Through his preparation for a spelling bee, the main character learns that his hard work pays off. Stellaluna relates a young bat's adventures as the result of her separation from her mother. Her attempts to live Ufe as a bird and her eventual discovery of her bat family provide opportunities for Stellaluna to understand her unique strengths. A cursory viewing of the two CD-ROM talkingbooks suggested that Stellaluna combined music, sound effects, and animation in ways that appeared to flow harmoniously with a play mode. On the other hand, Arthur's Teacher Trouble combined music, sound effects, and animation that appeared, at least on a cursory examination, to be discordant with the story during the play mode. Additionally, the classroom teacher identified these CD-ROM talking books as two she would select for use in her classroom, because
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they were electronic versions of books that had been written by authors she enjoyed and respected. In other words, she expected both of the CDROM talking books to be representative of the type of children's literature she selected for reading aloud. We expected that a content analysis would help us to understand and characterize subtle differences between these two CD-ROM talking books. The first author reviewed and initially coded features present on each screen of the CD-ROM talking books. She then set up a three-column coding protocol that consisted of (a) screen medium, (b) media effect, and (c) story relationship (See Table 1). Each feature (i.e., static illustration on the screen, animated illustration, sound effects, or text) was listed in column one and assigned a code that reflected the book title (i.e., ATT = Arthur's Teacher Trouble, SL = Stellaluna), the type of screen (i.e., is = interactive screen, one that allowed the viewer to interact with screen features through clicking the mouse; PS = passive screen, a screen that did not allow the viewer to interact with screen features through clicking the mouse), the screen number, and the number assigned to a particular screen feature (e.g., represents each feature identified on that screen). To fill out the next column, we clicked on each screen feature and wrote a brief description of the resulting animation, narration, music, or special effect. If additional clicking on a feature resulted in a repetition of the action, that was also coded. However, if additional clicking resulted in a new action, each subsequent action was listed and noted by the addition of lowercase letters (e.g., AT T I S I -1 a, AT T I S I - ib, AT T I S I -1 c). In this way, it would be possible for us to keep track of any series of repeated interactions the case-study child might access in the next phase of the study. Constant comparison analysis (Glaser & Strauss,i967) of the descriptions in the second column resulted in the categories listed in column three. These categories describe the relation of the animation to the story as either integral, incidental, or incongruent. Relations of interactive CD-ROM talking-book multimedia features to the story were integral if they were a crucial and complementary part of the story. For example, when a child clicks on a static image of Arthur, who sits at a kitchen table, he sighs and says that he cannot play, because he has too much homework to do. Relations were incidental if they were supplemental to the story or resulted in a logical action. For example, a water faucet runs a stream of water into a kitchen sink. Relations were incongruent if they were not related to the story or resulted in illogical action. For example, a hot pad in the kitchen turns into a butterfly and flies around the room, or a tray of cookies sprouts top hats and begins singing a barbershop-quartet song. Additionally, if we identified multimedia features as either integral or incidental, we also noted in column three which story element each feature contributed to developing
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Table 1. Example of Arthur's Teacher Trouble CD-ROM Talking-Book Coding Sheet Screen medium ATTIS1-4 Static The Brain (a character) ATTIS1-5a Static Mr. R Coat
Media effect
Story relationship
This is going to be a long year." Reclick - repeated
Integral (setting mood)
Coat changes to yellow with purple spots and fades back. Mr. R. raises his right thumb and says, "Whoa."
Incongruent
Reclick - Plaid "Hmmm" Reclick - Repeated
Incongruent
Coat changes to tiger stripes and fades. "Oh." Reclick - Repeated
Incongruent
"Sprong"s open then closes back up all by itself Reclick - Repeated
Incongruent
"We had fun today didn't we?" Students all say, "Yes Mr. R." Reclick - Repeated
Integral (setting)
A windshield wiper appears, wipes glass, a figure appears, makes a face, then sees people and gasps then ducks down. Reclick - Repeated
Incongruent
Flap spins and sounds like a cash register Reclick - Repeated
Incongruent
ATTIS1-5D
ATTIS1-6 Static Mr. R Pants
ATTIS1-7 Mr. R's planning book which he holds behind him ATTIS1-8 Static Mr. R Face
ATTIS1-9 Static glass on door
ATTIS1-10 Static trash can
ATTIS1-11 Static school bell
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Ringer swings below bell dome, Incongruent gets a mallet, strikes the bell dome, to a gonging sound, a halo, stars, tweeting bird sound appears, stops, then fades away
(i.e., characters, location, time, problem, goal, events, character development, resolution, theme; Mandler & Johnson, 1977). To determine interrater reliability, we used the categories to code independently five screens early on. Interrater reliability was 91% agreement. Discrepancies that occurred tended to be in distinguishing integral from incidental multimedia effects. Discussion of discrepancies helped us refine our understanding of the categories and equipped us to continue the code-level analysis of the CD-ROMS.
Analysis of the coding sheets for each of the screens revealed distinct patterns of the relation between the interactive screen media effects and the story. Fifty-six percent (n = 214) of the media effects in Arthur's Teacher Trouble were incongruent to the story, whereas 16% (n = 38) of the effects in Stellaluna were so designated. Forty-four percent (« = 165) of Arthur's Teacher Trouble as compared to 84% (« = 201) of the effects in Stellaluna were either integrally or incidentally related to the story. In other words, there were almost twice as many effects in Stellaluna that were related to the story. Thus, if we were to base our characterization of the CD-ROM talking books on the relation of the interactive multimedia features to the story, we would designate Arthur's Teacher Trouble as an inconsiderate text and Stellaluna as a considerate text, as we have conceptualized these constructs in this study. However, before basing a designation on content analysis alone, we decided to explore one of Armbruster and Anderson's (1981, 1984) criteria by considering how a young child would go about making sense of the two CD-ROM talking books. Phase 2: Case-Study Data Collection and Analysis In this section, we describe our theoretical framework and method in phase 2 of our study, which was a case study of one kindergarten child's interactions with the two CD-ROM talking books we identified and analyzed during phase 1. This portion of the study was drawn from a larger ethnography of young children's opportunities to construct literacy with technology in their kindergarten classroom over the course of 1 academic year. Twice a week during 1 school year, we were participant observers taking field notes, collecting video and audiotapes, conducting informal interviews, observing children's activities in a computer center where CD-ROM talking-book activities were available, and collecting samples of their computer-related work. The classroom teacher had 24 years of teaching experience in K - I classrooms and had utilized a computer center in her room for the previous 5 years. Children in this classroom were accustomed to having access in the computer center and to at least one related CD-ROM talking book
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for each 6-week thematic auricular unit. Thus, children were familiar with the concept and format of CD-ROM talking books. We decided that a casestudy analysis was appropriate, because it would allow us to conduct an in-depth, intensive examination of a child's meaning-making processes. Furthermore, we decided to enlist the aid of the teacher in identifying a child as a typical-case selection (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). A typical-case selection involves identifying a participant who possesses attributes of a typical person from within the culture or phenomenon being studied (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993). Thus, we asked the teacher to select a typical student that she expected might benefit from reading CDROM talking books in the classroom computer center. Through a process of elimination that began with 25 kindergarten students, the teacher narrowed her choices to a subgroup of 12 students. Next, in our interviews with her, she related how she continued to narrow the field by reviewing assessment portfolios and considering each child's literacy development. Finally, she nominated Roberto (a pseudonym), explaining that, in her view, he could benefit, like many other students of average kindergarten literacy abilities, by having left-to-right directionality reinforced whenever the text was highlighted as it was read aloud on each CD-ROM talking-book screen. She also stated that she believed he would benefit from spending more time interacting with story characters, vocabulary terms, and concepts as they were revealed through engaging digital features. Therefore, she hoped that his interactions with multimedia effects of the CD-ROM talking book versions of stories would support him by reinforcing his notions about the story structure of print-based stories. She also stated that Roberto had made average progress in his literacy development when compared to the other children in his classroom. Additionally, she noted that although Roberto spoke English in class, his parents utilized a mixture of English and Spanish at home. Therefore, she believed that additional self-selected encounters with English words in the interactive mode of CD-ROM talking books might support his burgeoning English vocabulary development. Our own observations and field notes of Roberto's life in the classroom suggested to us that he was an eager and able participant in various learning activities and that he was a good candidate for a typical-case selection participant. Roberto's retellings of stories in various classroom settings (e.g., after storytime discussions, drawing and talking about the main idea of a story) led us to believe that he had a basic concept of stories and story features. Roberto was as likely to become engrossed in an independent activity, such as examining and drawing pictures of sea shells in a science center, as he was to become an enthusiastic participant in a group activity, such as building a block city with peers in the block center. Although Roberto spoke English in class, he was willing to whisper spontaneously a
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Spanish translation in the ear of one of his Spanish-speaking peers if they experienced difficulty with understanding classroom directions. One of his favorite activities, indicated to us in an informal interview, was to use stuffed animals, puppets, or a flannel board the teacher occasionally made available to retell stories that the teacher read aloud. Although he was not a conventional reader, it was not unusual to find him snuggled cross-legged into a comfortable floor pillow in the library corner pretending to read a book to a stuffed animal or to a classroom friend. Additionally, Roberto was always eager to spend time reading CD-ROM talking books, playing games, or writing stories with strings of typed letters at the computer center. Transcripts were compiled from field notes that were supplemented by information from videotapes and notes from informal questions we spontaneously asked Roberto as he interacted with each of the CD-ROM talking books on two separate occasions. Roberto worked at a classroom computer while other students in his classroom rotated through regularly scheduled centers. Our focus on Roberto allowed us to gain insights into the various processes he employed in making sense of the story as it unfolded on the screen and allowed us to have a detailed record of Roberto's comments and actions. If we asked a question, we made a note in the transcript and recorded his response. We also noted those occasions when we asked Roberto to point to what he was looking at on the screen. These notations allowed us to determine what aspects of the screen he was attending to when he was not actively involved in clicking on any of the screen features, which aided our coding. We further analyzed Roberto's interactions by referring to our coding sheets previously filled out for each portion of the screen as integral, incidental, or incongruent, the categories we established in phase i of the study. This cross checking allowed us to connect phase i with phase 2 of the study. Roberto's interactions with screen features. A count of Roberto's interactions in relation to the story revealed that he tended to access whatever features were available. For example, when more incongruent choices were available in Arthurs Teacher Trouble, he accessed them. Well over half (59%, « = 165) of his interactions with Arthurs Teacher Trouble focused on incongruent effects, whereas under 10% (« = 8) of his interactions with Stellaluna were incongruent, which is consistent with the fact that many more incongruent effects were available in Arthurs Teacher Trouble. Ninetyone percent (M = 115) of the Stellaluna interactions were integrally or incidentally related to the story as compared to only 41% (« = 115) for Arthurs Teacher Trouble. We wondered if the data held even more information that could provide us with additional insights into Roberto's thinking processes. Robertos talk and behaviors. Constant comparison analysis (Glaser &
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Strauss, 1967) of transcripts of Roberto's spontaneous comments, supplemented with field notes of his behaviors, and comments during interviews resulted in emerging subcategories of responses and types of interactions that we noted on his transcripts. This form of analysis involves a simultaneous comparison of all observed and coded incidents. The process allows for the discovery of patterns and relations among the patterns and subcategories. The subcategories that emerged from these data initially suggested to us that Roberto was at times either passively attending to or actively, cognitively engaged with media effects. For example, a subcategory we labeled "passively viewing" consisted of watching the screen without comment, behavior, or expression, whereas a subcategory we labeled "cognitive engagement" involved spontaneous comments and behaviors suggestive of more active engagement with the story. As these initial categories continued to be refined, we noted that his responses to the stories as they were presented on screen varied considerably. The final major categories were as follows: attentive/perceptual, CD procedures, affective, cognitive, and metacognitive. Table 2 shows all of the categories and subcategories and provides examples of Roberto's responses across the two CD-ROM talking books by subcategory. However, we felt we needed clarification and additional insights into Roberto's meaning-making processes that extended beyond this level of analysis. Roberto's meaning-making processes. Constant comparative analysis of Roberto's interactions resulted in interesting categories of behavior and talk. However, we wondered if additional, extended analysis would provide additional insights into his meaning-making processes. Therefore, we did not abandon the categories that emerged from the constant comparative analysis. Rather, we sought to discover if there were discernable patterns across the identified categories of his CD-ROM storybook interactions. At this stage of the study, we recalled a potentially productive framework for extended data analysis and interpretation that could delve into Roberto's levels of interaction with features of each of the CD-ROM talking books. We agreed with Morrow (1989), who suggested Wittrock's Generative Learning Model as an explanation for the processes a listener or reader engages in when actively constructing relationships with textual information (Wittrock, 1986). We believed that the Generative Learning Model would provide a helpful framework for conceptualizing young children's opportunities for literacy development as they read CD - RO M talkingbooks. This model is useful for considering a child's learning in electronic learning environments, because it focuses on a reader's attention, motivation, knowledge processes, and generative learning. When the model was applied to an analysis of Roberto's CD-ROM talking-book interactions, we considered (a) attention (i.e., What did Roberto attend to on screen?), (b)
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motivation (i.e., Why did Roberto attend to those particular features? What was his affective stance toward the features he encountered?), (c) knowledge (i.e., What were his meaning-making or cognitive processes?), and (d) generation (i.e., How might Roberto's story retellings reflect his comprehension of story and his overall story schema?). Thus, we conducted an additional analysis of Roberto's previously coded transcripts and newly conducted follow-up interviews. By asking Roberto and ourselves what he attended to and why he did so, we were able to gain additional insights into his processes of meaning making. As we visited and revisited our coded transcripts with this framework in mind, interesting and unique patterns began to emerge. Our findings at this level suggested to us that unique features of the CD-ROM talking books fostered a presence of or a lack of complex chains of affect and cognition or thinking. Chains of affect and cognition are similar to Trabasso and van den Broek's (1985) notion of chains of psychological casualty. Psychological casualty
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Table 2. Roberto's Categories of CD-ROM Talking-Book Responses ATTENTIVE/PERCEPTUAL Passive Viewing - watching, no comment Clicking - as on animation with no utterances AFFECTIVE Humor - laughing Sarcasm - "Oh, give me a break." Dramatic - repeating dialogue, sound effects Musical - Swaying/singing COGNITIVE Labeling - 'That's a tree." Describing Action - "She's flying" Wondering - "I wonder why she did that." Providing a Summary Statement - "So far she hasn't found her baby." Commenting on a Character - "He's always scared." Commenting on Plot - "First the story is [happening] in the night, then in the day, then after she [Stellaluna] found the birds." Commenting on Theme - This story was all about getting along."
CD PROCEDURES Navigating through the CD - click on arrow to move to next screen Planning CD Procedures - "I'll click on the word to hear it said." METACOGNITIVE Predicting - "She's gonna fall." Confirming - "She fell down." Intratextual Connections - "Remember, mama bird wanted Stellaluna to act like the little birds, but she now Stellaluna learned how to act like a little bat." Personal Life Connections - "Once I was lost like Stellaluna." Strategic access of media effects - "I can see what mom is doing right now if I click up on this oval." Misconceptions - 'That's a pizza" (pointing to a salt dough map of Africa on screen)
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involves how readers' complex story schema interact with story elements in interpreting and understanding stories. In other words, psychological casualty is the cognitive processes readers employ in their efforts to make sense of a story by collecting, connecting, and drawing inferences across story elements such as mood, character motives, character actions, story problems or goals, story events, and cause-effect relations. Trabasso and van den Broek (1985) suggested that the clarity of an author's writing, including providing enough written or pictorial cues to support a reader's ability to make inferences, affects story comprehension. While interacting with the Stellaluna CD-ROM talking book, Roberto consistently engaged in complex and explicitly stated chains of affect and cognition that wove together affect, cognition, metacognition, and higherorder thinking. For example, when Roberto interacted with screen multimedia features that were integral to the story such as an animation clip that showed Stellaluna's mother looking for her in spite of an enemy owl's pursuit and Stellaluna's first encounter with the baby birds, he constructed story meaning in the following affect and cognition chaining processes: cognitive (wondering what the mother bat was doing, "What is this?"), metacognitive (planning how to access additional story information on screen, "Let's look and see."), cognitive (intertextual link, "It's mother. She was looking for the baby before"), cognitive (summarize initiating event, "She was looking for the baby after she dropped the baby"), affective (humor at story integral animation, Robert giggles when a baby bird pokes Stellaluna with his beak and she acts startled). On the other hand, while interacting with the Arthur's Teacher Trouble CD-ROM talking book, there was ample evidence of Roberto's passive attention and an absence of chains of affect and cognition. For example, when interacting with a series of incongruent-to-story multimedia features of Arthur and his friends standing in the hallway, Roberto tended to passively watch the screen. His interactions consisted of the following processes: attentive perceptual (passively watching as he clicked on a static illustration of a fire extinguisher. The hose disconnects and spews around and around like a whip), attentive perceptual (passively watching as he clicked on a static illustration of a door knob that pops out of the door like a yo-yo, then back into the door with cartoon-like sounds), attentive perceptual (passively viewing while he reclicked on the door knob and the action repeated), cognitive labeling action (clicking on a static illustration of the glass of a door to a classroom. H-e-l-p is spelled backwards on the condensation that appears on the glass, "It's spelling."). At other times, Roberto expressed an affective stance of humor whenever he laughed and appreciated a special effect; however, this affective motivation did not connect to a chain of affect and cognition. For example, an affective chuckle at
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a special effect was followed by a single, lower-level cognitive function, such as a simple labeling of action. At this phase of the study, we believed that we had a possible case to make for designating Stellaluna as a considerate CD-ROM talking book and Arthur's Teacher Trouble as an inconsiderate CD-ROM talking book, as we have conceptualized those constructs in this study. As illustrated in a previous section of this report, it was clear that Roberto consistently engaged in rich chains of affect and cognition when reading Stellaluna, but he engaged in nonconnected and passive attentive behaviors when interacting with the story-incongruent multimedia features of Arthur's Teacher Trouble. At this point, we believed we had determined what Roberto was attending to, what he found to be motivating, and how he had processed what he saw on the screen; however, we did not yet have a clear picture of how well he had comprehended the stories. This question led to the final phase of the study. Phase 3: Analysis of Roberto's Digital Retellings
After Roberto finished interacting with each CD-ROM talking book, we invited him to retell the story by composing an artistic response with KidPix 2 (Hickman, 1994), a multimedia writing and drawing program, and then to dictate a story retelling, which we typed on the screen for him. We asked him to retell the story as if he were telling it to someone who had never heard or seen the CD-ROM talking book. We believed that the multimedia features of the software would give Roberto the opportunity to use a computer format for a retelling of the story that was similar to the computer presentation of the CD-ROM talking books. As during the previous phase, we took observational field notes, conducted open-ended questioning, recorded his spontaneous comments, and made a copy of his finished work as it appeared on screen. As mentioned earlier, teacher recommendation and our own observations of Roberto's retellings of other stories in classroom situations led us to believe that he had a basic concept of stories and story features; however, we wondered what sense he had made of the CDROM talking books in interactive mode. Continuing to use qualitative methods, we analyzed each retelling to understand if Roberto had retold the stories in ways that represented the story structure. For example, we looked for evidence of the cohesiveness of the story plot. We also wondered if he would include any of the congruent or incongruent CD-ROM talking-book multimedia features of his interactions in his retellings. Findings suggest that Roberto's retelling of the Stellaluna CD-ROM talking book (see Figure 1) resulted in a cohesive story that included the location, the characters, the problem, the attempts to solve the problem, and
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the resolution. Additionally, his drawings and dictated text combined to tell a cohesive story that drew from the integral information Roberto accessed during his interactions with the CD-ROM talkingbook. For example, he included the mother bird and her three babies in the treetop. Roberto's inclusions of the clip-art snake, spider, and elephant icons were drawn from CD-ROM talking-book animations that were supportive of the story setting. On the other hand, Roberto's retelling of Arthur's Teacher Trouble (see Figure 2) resulted in a fragmented story. He included many incongruent animation features from the CD-ROM talking book as part of his textual retelling. For example, in the fourth line of his dictated story, he referred to an incongruent animation feature, a paper airplane that would appear suddenly and fly around the screen to catchy music, "And that airplane it was flying to that music." There was also evidence of a misconception in the second line. When he dictated the following statement, "Then actually, he do one of those foods ..." he was referring to a salt dough map of Africa that Arthur made for a homework assignment. Although the text portion of the CD-ROM talking book clearly states that Arthur was making a map, Roberto's confusion about the activity as depicted in the animation was fl good story by Junior... The bat and the bird playing with their friends. The bat fall down in one tree. Then the mother tried to find Nom {he fleui amay and shefound some fiy?if nnfl Thr eat. "~ ¡They found each other, find the mother hugged her. Then the bat hugged the bird, find they liued_ happily euer after. They are friends/ That's all May 13, 1998^
Figure 7. Roberto's Stellaluna KidPix 2 Retelling
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understandable given the many incongruent media effects that surround that screen action. Additionally, Roberto added clip-art characters (e.g., 3 cats, 3 mice, 2 dogs, and a bear) and dictated events (e.g., beginning in line 7 with a text reference to a dog chasing a cat and a cat chasing a mouse) that were not present as congruent, incidental, or incongruent aspects of the story or media effects. It is important to keep in mind that Roberto was not asked to extend upon, or innovate upon the story. Rather, he was specifically directed to retell the CD-ROM talking book story. His inability to do so in a cohesive manner suggests to us that his comprehension of the story was not supported and perhaps was denigrated by incongruent multimedia effects.
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Discussion There is undoubtedly a provocative appeal in the motivational aspects of CD-ROM talking books that have been termed by some as edutainment (McLester, 1996). CD-ROM talkingbooks are fun, and children like Roberto enjoy them immensely. We applaud those who seek out motivating and firthur work in school, and he do a lot of work. Then he work in the house, too when the school was oner. Then actually, he do one of those foods. He make. D.W. said she not going to do no homework. Then when that man said kindergarten, now kindergarten going to do homework. RNd that airplane it was flying to that music. Then, he go to school and do homework. Then they came and they all play with flrthur and the mouse, too, play wifiUlim.. Then the cat wants to chase the mouse and the ,jOg want to chaseJ the cat and they cat chase the mouse. 1 said "Get! don't getj room any
Figure 2. Roberto's Arthur's TeacherTrouble KidPix 2 Retelling
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entertaining software, because it is a positive move away from the dull and unimaginative skill-and-drill software that is so ubiquitous (Clements, Natasi, & Swaminathan, 1993). Haugland and Shade (1994) reported that the developmentally appropriate software that is available for young children is overshadowed by skill-and-drill programs, which represent about 75% of the marketplace. However, the present study raises the question as to the possibility that some edutainment programs may coax children into habits of thinking or dispositions toward meaning making that are nonproductive when viewed from the perspective of traditional printbased literacy development. A potential case in point is provided by the entertaining but incongruent story interactive features oí Arthur's Teacher Trouble. When presented with high percentages of story-incongruent interactive multimedia features, children like Roberto (and we suspect other children may as well) shift into passive cognitive modes. This passivity is noted by Roberto's series of unconnected episodes of perceptual attention. This passivity is troubling, because a passive stance may disconnect a young reader from attempting to engage in cognitive processes that are crucial to our current notions of traditional literacy and literary development. For example, on several occasions, Roberto gave up trying to make sense out of the humorous but story-incongruent animations he encountered when interacting with Arthur's Teacher Trouble. Over time, this act of suspended judgement and passive attention could potentially teach him to cease monitoring his comprehension or to disengage from active mental participation. Sustained exposure to incongruencies in stories may also impede his ability or desire to make logical predictions about upcoming story events, an integral aspect of print-based notions of interactive process reading models and comprehension. More research is needed to gain insights into the long-term disadvantages or advantages of CD-ROM talking books for fostering children's active engagement with stories. When Roberto interacted with the very entertaining but considerate Stellaluna CD-ROM talking book, he engaged in chains of affect and cognition. Interestingly, he began at times with a passive attentive perceptual mode, as when he observed what was appearing on the screen with the absence gestures and spontaneous comments. It is clear that the absence of verbalized comments while interacting with Arthur's Teacher Trouble is not necessarily an indicator of his lack of higher-order cognitive processing. On the other hand, it is also dear that after viewing incongruent features, Roberto's subsequent behaviors and comments were conducted at a low level of cognition (e.g., labeling), and that his responses to our questions indicated he was passively watching the screen. However, when the media features were congruent to the story, he moved quickly into a stance of affective appreciation followed by a chain of cognitive meaning-making processes such as making predictions, strategically planning, making in204
ferences about character's motives, summarizing events, and making connections with his own life experiences. This suggests to us that his comprehension of the story was being enriched and supported by media effects that were integral and logically related to the story. Of interest is Roberto's retelling of the stories by drawing illustrations, using clip art, and dictating text. If we assume that retellings are a reflection of Roberto's comprehension and understanding of story structure, it becomes apparent that the incongruent features of Arthur's Teacher Trouble negatively affected his story organization. His inclusion of pictorial details and events not present in the story suggests that he included non-storyrelated and incongruent story features in his own retelling. It is important to note that the prompt given was not intended to see what the story reading evoked in him. Rather, the prompt was to retell the story as if he were telling it to someone who had never heard or seen the CD-ROM talking book. The fact that his retelling does not have a coherent structure suggests that his comprehension of story was subverted. On the other hand, his Stellaluna retelling gave evidence of his understanding of the story theme, the characters, the problem, the key events, and the logical unfolding of the plot. Also notable is the fact that his time-on-task, a well researched observation that the more time children spend in classrooms on active tasks the more their learning will be enhanced (see Hoffman, 1991, for an overview), did not appear to be a factor in supporting Roberto's story comprehension. The difference in time Roberto spent interacting with the stories was not great. Indeed, he spent 90 minutes interacting with Arthur's Teacher Trouble and 77 minutes with Stellaluna. The teachers expectation that extended time with the CD-ROM talking book would allow him to learn more about stories and storybook characters was either encouraged or undermined by considerate or inconsiderate multimedia features. Therefore, as educators, we cannot automatically assume that children benefit from extended computer time unless we are confident that the media they encounter is well designed and supportive of their literacy needs. Limitations and Other Considerations For purposes of this study, we have maintained a purposefully narrow view of the role that CD-ROM talking books might play in providing opportunities for young children's print-based literacy development. That is, we adopted the teacher's expectation that CD-ROM talkingbooks maybe used to support children's schema for print-based stories. However, it is worth noting that CD-ROM talking books in play mode might rightly be considered as a new digital genre that requires unique cognitive processing. The concept of story is culturally determined and perhaps is also dependent to 205
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some degree on the media and technologies employed to create stories. Therefore, it is possible that Roberto's retelling oí Arthur's Teacher Trouble might reflect his intuitive insight into reproducing a story in a format consistent with the features of his play-mode interactions. More research is needed on children's meaning-making strategies when the content and structure of CD-ROM talking-book stories are viewed as a unique digital genre. Additionally, as a case study, this research provides one in-depth look at one child's meaning making of CD-ROM talking books. Case studies are designed not only to answer questions but to raise additional questions. How do children of different ability levels interact with and make sense of CD-ROM talking books or other electronic forms of digital narratives? Do children with a well-developed story schema interact with screen features in different ways than children with less well-developed story schema?
Implications and Conclusions In closing, our findings suggest thatWittrock's (1986) notion of a Generative Learning Model provides a useful framework for understanding one child's digital meaning making. This model is useful for considering children's meaning-making processes in electronic, computer-related environments, because it allows a simultaneous focus on what the child is attending to on screen, their motivations for attending to particular screen features, their meaning-making/comprehension processes, and what knowledge is generated from their interactions with the computer program. Additional research in this area with larger cohorts of children from various socioeconomic and cultural groups could add to a growing body of knowledge about children's processes of print-based and digitally based comprehension. Our findings also suggest that, when taking the perspective that electronic versions of stories may support children's conventional, print-based literacy development, CD-ROM talking books might be characterized as either considerate or inconsiderate. Considerate CD-ROM talking books are those that are designed to contain interactive multimedia features that are integral to and supportive of the story. Inconsiderate CDROM talking books are those that have many incongruent and illogical interactive features that disrupt the telling of the print-based story. This finding does not mean that we recommend that entertaining multimedia features such as humorous animation and sound effects should be discontinued. Nor does this finding suggest to us that there is no role for CDROM talking books in the early childhood classroom. For example, teachers may use interactive play-mode versions of CD-ROM talking books as a springboard for creative writing and response activities. However, we do
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suggest that when the purpose of utilizing CD-ROM talking books is to support children's print-based literacy development, animation features should be carefully crafted as logical and engaging story components that ultimately support, or scaffold, children's engagement with and understanding of story. This finding is supported by a position noted earlier by Chaille and Littman (1985) that software design should allow children to encounter logical cause-and-effect processes. Kindergarten teachers, who skillfully bring beautifully crafted books to life during storybook sharing time, frequently do so by first selecting what they deem to be well-written books. In well-written children's picture books, the artistry of the pictures and literary aspects of the text are woven together in ways that result in a well-crafted story. Illustrations and text work in harmonious concert with pictures providing crucial or complementary story components (Golden &Gerber,i99o).Findings from this study suggest that educators cannot assume that the qualities they value in a printed storybook automatically results in similar qualities in the CDROM talking-book version of a story. It is our belief that teachers who wish to use electronic stories to support children's conventional literacy development must follow the same critical judgement they employ in literature selection to their selection of CD-ROM talking books. More research is warranted into how teachers make decisions about literacy-related software selection and use. Evaluators and designers of CD-ROM talking books should consider formulating and articulating new digital conventions by considering how all of the multimedia aspects of the CD-ROM talking book work together to tell the story in ways that are supportive, or considerate, of children's comprehension of story. On the other hand, if interactive play-mode versions of stories are specifically designed to support children's nonlinear and noncohesive engagement with a new genre of CD-ROM talking book story, then it is imperative that the field begin to grapple with the implications for instruction inherent in a new genre. Additional research that seeks to understand the unique conventions of digital media is needed to help CD-ROM talking-book designers better understand how to create considerate digital text for young children. When young children interact with CD-ROM talking books, the media effects should serve not as sources of confusion but as valuable sources of information, of wonder, and of joy.
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