A Closer Look at Enhanced Ebooks: Compatible Versus Distracting Games

Abstract

The current literature on eBooks contains conflicting results for enhanced eBooks containing games and hot spots as effective reading tools for children. This study investigated different types of interactivity within enhanced eBooks to understand how the relation of the games embedded in eBooks to the story line may affect how much the child learns from the story. The study also involved observation of the different co-reading styles of parents and children as an exploratory analysis. The results indicate that interactivity within the enhanced eBooks neither helped nor hurt children’s ability to learn new words from the story and to remember the story content. It was also found that all of the eBooks elicited content-related co-reading, but enhanced eBooks elicited more non-content-related co-reading. Implications of the findings are discussed.