When It's Story Time, Animated Books Are Better for Learning | Stories - Carnegie Mellon University

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University found that digital storybooks that animate upon a child's vocalization offer beneficial learning opportunities, especially for children with less developed attention regulation by Stacy Kish, Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

"Digital platforms have exploded in popularity, and a huge proportion of the top-selling apps are educational interfaces for children," said Erik Thiessen, associate professor of Psychology at CMU's Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and senior author on the paper. "Many digital interfaces are poorly suited to children’s learning capacities, but if we can make them better, children can learn better."

The results are available in in the December 19 issue of the journal Developmental Psychology...

While this study found animated digital storybooks are beneficial for children, especially children with lower attention skills, the study did not explore why this approach proved to be advantageous. The study did require children to recall information through identification and description, which has proven to be a valid approach to identify a children's competency in understanding the story.
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Source: Carnegie Mellon University