Parents who engage in the age-old tradition of picture-book reading are not only encouraging early reading development in their children but are also teaching their toddlers about the world around them, according to a study in the latest issue of Development Psychology, published by the American Psychological Association (APA). This finding shows that interactions with life-like colour pictures can aid in children’s learning.

Parents of preschool children reported that they own dozens of children’s picture books and spend approximately 40 minutes a day reading books to their small children. To determine the extent of a young child’s ability to learn from a picture-book, psychologist Gabrielle Simcock, and co-author and psychologist Judy Deloache, tested if toddlers could imitate specific target actions on novel real-world objects on the basis of a picture-book interaction.

A total of 132 children from three different age groups (18 months, 24 months and 30 months) participated in two studies to determine if age influenced a todler’s ability to learn how to construct a simple rattle from a picture-book reading.

In the first study, two groups of children ages 18, 24 and 30 months, were given one of two picture books. One contained six colour photographs and the other contained coloured pencil drawings that were reproductions of the photograph. At the end of the reading, the children were asked to construct a rattle using the items in front of them. The study revealed that many of the children were able to imitate te actions depicted and described in the book.

“This research shows that very young children can learn to perform novel actions with novel objects from a brief picture-book reading interaction. This common form of interaction that takes place very early in children’s lives, may provide an important source of information to them about the world around them,” said lead author, Gabrielle Simcock.

The iconicity (similarity between the actual object and the likeness presented in the book) of the pictures in the books had the most influence on the youngest children’s reenactment. The 18-month toddlers were less able to follow the directions given in the book containing coloured-pencil drawings then when they were when given directions from the books containing li