The Effect of Visual Cueing and Control Design on Children’s Reading Achievement of Audio E-books with Tablet Computers

Abstract

This study aims to explore the impact of learner grade, visual cueing, and control design on children’s readingachievement of audio e-books with tablet computers. This research was a three-way factorial design where the firstfactor was learner grade (grade four and six), the second factor was e-book visual cueing (word-based, line-based,and paragraph-based cueing), and the third factor was e-book control mechanism (system-controlled andlearner-controlled). The e-books used in this study were on the topic of six major classes of nutrients and the contentwas created with Adobe Flash CS 5.5. This research was guided by this question: Is there any interaction amonglearner grade, visual cueing, and learner control on children’s reading of audio e-books in terms of learningachievement (recall and transfer)? A sample of one hundred and eighty-five fourth and sixth graders joined the study,and participants were assigned into one of these groups randomly. The results showed significant interactions amongthese three factors. The fourth graders found the paragraph-based cueing and system-controlled mechanismadvantageous; however, the sixth graders performed equally well under all different conditions of interface design.The results indicated that the fourth and sixth graders have different characteristics as readers and, by extension,suggest audio e-book design should consider the target readers’ cognitive and psychological development.