By sharing stories with their parents, children progress in their learning to read and enrich their imagination. But do the media used influence their perceptions? What is the difference between using an audio book and a paper book? Some thoughts at a time when new technologies are increasing the number of methods available.
There are different ways to tell a story to a child. Improvising yourself as a storyteller, with no other support than your own voice, is one, reading an illustrated book is another. With digital technology, the range of audio books available is diversifying. And with the arrival of AI, the possibilities are multiplying.
Each of these modalities has its charms and its effects. But how does the child really understand these different formats? How does the vector of the story influence his attention, his understanding or his imagination? How can these varied approaches shape its relationship to language and to narration itself? Research offers us some avenues to see things more clearly.
Telling the story “simply”: the magic of orality
Imagine an adult speaking to tell a story without any visual support, using only their voice, their gaze, their gestures. The child, captivated, listens and creates his own images in his head. Here, everything goes through the intonation, rhythm and expressiveness of the storyteller.
It is a true oral show, a living transmission that can adapt in real time: the storyteller sees if the child is following, if he is intrigued or perplexed, and can re-explain or emphasize certain details. On the one hand, it stimulates the imagination: no imposed images, the child invents his own settings. On the other hand, even without visual support, the constant adjustment of the storyteller to the child’s reactions can support or even improve the understanding of the story.
According to the results of a study published by Rebecca Isbell and colleagues in Early Childhood Education Journal in 2004, children aged 3 to 5 exposed to purely oral stories demonstrated better understanding than those who had heard the same stories read in a book. This direct, flexible and responsive interaction places the child at the heart of the narrative dialogue, more easily removing ambiguities and reinforcing the relevance of orality in the learning process.
Shared reading: a rich moment of complicity
The great classic remains reading an illustrated book. We open the album, we discover the drawn characters, their expressions, the colorful landscapes. The illustrations primarily capture children’s attention during shared reading. This visual focus can play a key role in the overall understanding of the story, providing visual cues that complement the text.
This method of sharing is particularly effective for enriching vocabulary, awakening children to reading and helping them develop visual and textual cues, as Maryanne Wolf, a specialist in child development, explains remarkably well in Proust and the squid. With the paper book, you can go back, comment on a detail, point out a character, in short, create a very concrete interaction.
Read more: Reading stories to children, why it’s important
Of course, the fixed image limits the imagination a little, but it is a valuable support for learning words and understanding the narrative, especially for the youngest. In addition, the book, as a familiar object, reinforces this feeling of proximity and sharing.
Listen to an audiobook: immerse yourself in the voice and sounds
After shared reading, another format is gaining popularity: audiobooks. These allow the child to immerse themselves in a world of sound: an often professional voice, sometimes accompanied by music or sound effects.
The experience is immersive and can become very pleasant: you can close your eyes, imagine the scenes, let your mind wander. However, unlike the situation where the storyteller or parent is present, the recording does not allow for interruption to ask a question. This therefore requires more autonomy and ability to concentrate.
Studies indicate that audiobooks can encourage children, especially those with reading difficulties, to explore new stories and develop their attentive listening skills. For younger children, support from an adult is often necessary, even if only to re-explain an unknown word. This purely auditory format can also refine the child’s sensitivity to the nuances of voice and language.
AI, a new storyteller at your fingertips?
Recently, artificial intelligence has entered the dance. Tools such as ChatGPT can, on demand, invent a complete story, change its style, adapt the language level, answer the child’s questions, rephrase complex passages or instantly explain an unknown word. We can thus create a personalized story in which the child becomes the hero, or ask the AI to “rewrite” a scene by adding more suspense, humor or poetry.
This unprecedented flexibility allows you to easily interact with a modular narrative source. For example, a recent study by Ying Xu and colleagues (2022) and published in the journal Child Development has shown that conversational agents can reproduce the benefits of “dialogical reading” carried out with an adult, an interactive approach where the child is invited to answer questions about the story, which strengthens their engagement and understanding. These agents, by asking open questions and providing tailored feedback, helped improve children’s engagement and their narrative understanding.
This research highlights the potential for intelligent agents to play a complementary educational role, particularly when human interaction is not available. Their ability to imitate dialogic reading confirms the importance of interaction in the narrative process.
However, AI does not yet have the sensitivity or finesse of a human storyteller who knows the child well and knows how to interpret their non-verbal reactions (facial expressions, posture, fluctuating attention). She doesn’t really “understand” the story or the emotions it arouses. She cannot spontaneously adapt her story according to the mood of the moment nor choose the moral most appropriate to the family or cultural context.
In the future, improving AI models and their increasing ability to incorporate sensory or contextual data could refine this experience. AI could thus better understand the child’s individual preferences (themes, linguistic difficulties, preferred style), offer more nuanced stories, and even work in complementarity with other media (images generated by AI, adapted sound effects, etc.). Although this technology does not replace either the human storyteller or traditional reading, it can nevertheless become an additional tool, available at any time, to enrich the child’s narrative universe, arouse their curiosity and support their learning.
What effects on the child?
Each of these modes provides a number of unique benefits. Oral storytelling encourages interaction and creativity. Reading an illustrated book supports language learning, prepares you for reading and strengthens the bond with parents. The audiobook develops auditory concentration, while AI provides unprecedented flexibility and availability.
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None of these formats overshadow the others. They are complementary. The important thing is to vary the pleasures and adapt the choice to the age and tastes of the child. After the session, discussing the story is essential: what did he like? What did he understand? What words were new? Interactive approaches such as dialogic reading, described by researchers Grover J. Whitehurst and Christopher J. Lonigan, show that the active exchange between the adult and the child facilitates the appropriation of the story and the development of language skills.
Exposing children to stories, whatever the approaches used, benefits in the long term the development of their language, their attention and their imagination and also plays an essential role in the transmission of cultural and family references.