Do infants learn new words from educational picture books?

Do babies learn words from ‘first words’ picture books? One would expect this question to have been researched extensively, given the known benefits of reading to pre-schoolers for language learning. However, there is surprisingly little research on reading to babies. Babies may struggle to learn from picture books because they have immature symbolic insight – understanding that a picture (e.g., of a frog) symbolises a real-world thing. Some picture-book features may undermine babies’ learning by hampering this insight.

We will investigate whether babies learn words from picture books in a highly systematic yet naturalistic way, using commercial ‘first words’ picture books. Parents will read the books to their babies at home for 6 weeks. Before and after this, we will measure babies’ receptive vocabulary (words they understand) by having parents complete checklists and babies point at pictures and objects (‘Where is ____?’).

The findings will yield substantial theoretical advances in our understanding about babies’ symbolic insight. Practically, the project will clarify which picture-book features promote babies’ learning, with implications for those who design educational picture books (publishers), and those who choose them (parents, practitioners, librarians).