Susan B. Neuman
Children learn words through multiple media. In this paper, I argue that each medium’s features, its structure, its method of handling materials adds a new dimension to children’s knowledge and the means they employ to attain knowledge. Through an experiment that engages preschoolers in repeated presentations of a single medium (e.g. video or books) compared to different media (e.g. video and books) I show how vocabulary development benefits from multiple media presentations. Rather than detract from literacy learning, multiple media may provide an additional set of processing tools, which in combination with others contributes to vocabulary development.
