The impact of emotional tone during shared reading experiences

Abstract

Shared book reading is a pleasurable and educational activity between an adult and a child. The Ministry of Education of Ontario encourages parents to read aloud to their children in order to foster a love of reading and aid in the development of literacy skills. One Ministry recommendation is for the adult to “make it exciting: put some drama into your voice” (Ontario Ministry of Education, n.d.). The current study examined the effect of different emotional tones of voice on the eye movements of children during shared book reading and on the children’s comprehension for the material. Four storybooks were each recorded in four emotional tones of voice (neutral, angry, happy, and character), and presented on a computer screen. Each child was presented with each of the storybooks in one of the four conditions, with the combination of book and emotion randomized across participants. Eye-tracking technology followed each child’s eye movements during the presentation. The children were asked three comprehension questions related to each story immediately after, and two further questions at the end of all four presentations. Standardized tests of working memory capacity and basic academic skills were also administered to the children. Analyses showed that while the proportion of time the children spent on the text did not vary as a function of emotional tone, they made the most fixations and spent the most time on the text and images in the angry condition. Furthermore, the children made the fewest fixations and spent the least amount of time looking at the text and images in the happy condition. The children also scored the highest in regard to the comprehension questions in the angry condition. Finally, there were positive relationships between the children’s early reading skills and auditory working memory as per standardized tests, and their performance during the shared book reading and comprehension tasks.