Getting in a flap about lift-the-flap books
Yesterday I came across an interesting study which shows that children 2 year olds don't learn vocabulary from lift-the-flap books. The study is: Shinskey, J. L. (2021). Lift-the-flap features in “first words” picture books impede word learning in 2-year-olds. Journal of Educational Psychology, 113 (4), 641–655. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000628 Sixteen children were shown a lift-the-flap book with photographs of fruit and vegetables, and another 16 were shown the same book modified to have no flaps. Each child went through the text six times, having the fruit and veg names given for them. The experimenters used starfruit as their key item, teaching the children it was called 'carambola'. Afterwards the children who had seen the no-flap book were significantly better at identifying 'carambola' from a choice of images or a choice of fake food items. There was no difference, however, between their ability to choose the higher frequency food items. The researcher