Using picture books to enhance preschoolers’ comprehension and cognitive development

This investigation is aimed at defining and checking educational strategies to foster children comprehension of pictures, i.e. at developing, implementing and evaluating a research-based training for enhancing the pre-schoolers’ abilities to read and comprehend pictures ( like these we find in illustrated books), and especially to recognise the actions the characters are performing, and the activities in which they are engaged.The training project was based on 3 main resources: a) the use of pictures which present children with specific comprehension tasks ; b) the instructional use of asking the children for verbalising their own visual exploration (Kunen and Duncan 1983); c) and the use of a special feedback which consists of accurately reformulating all children’s speech acts (Lumbelli 1996). The results (from 30 children 5 year olds children), show that it is possible to foster children’s pictures comprehension ability. The investigation also contributed to define new criteria for picture comprehension assessment.