Impact of realistic and non-realistic storybook characters on young children's book listening comprehension

The purpose of this study was to compare the impact of two storybooks - one with realistic and one with non-realistic characters - on children's comprehension performance. Children's performances in character and event recall, reasoning and problem-solving were compared. The participants were 100 young children enrolled in 1 of 13 classes at 4 public kindergartens in the Erzurum province of Turkey. From each class participants were randomly assigned to realistic and non-realistic story groups. Each participant was tested individually. After storybooks were read, children were asked to respond to questions on character-subject, event recall, reasoning and problem-solving for pre-, post- and (one week later) follow-up tests. Findings revealed that realistic and non-realistic groups' comprehension performance did not significantly differ for post-test. From post- to follow-up test, the non-realistic group's mean scores significantly decreased while the realistic group's mean did not decrease significantly. The investigators concluded that the availability of realistic storybooks in early childhood should increase.