CONTRIBUTION OF PICTURES TO CHILDREN’S COMPREHENSION OF T H E MAIN IDEA I N READING’

KARLKOENKE WAYNE OTTO

University of Illinois, Urbana University of Wisconsin, Madison

The present study was designed to examine the extent to which content relevant pictures contribute to children’s comprehension of the main idea inherent in a printed passage. Reviews of investigations of the effects of pictures upon compre- hension (Spaulding, 1955; Weintraub, 1960, 1966; Koenke, 1968) show that re- searchers, who have been concerned about picture effects, have generally measured reading comprehension globally, i.e., a single comprehension test score was derived from a series of questions about main ideas, sequence, and details. As a result, conclusions about the role of pictures in reading comprehension have usually been in terms of general comprehension and, because the measures of general compre- hension have differed, the results have often been a t odds. For example, Miller (1938) and Goodykoontz (1936) concluded that the addition of pictures to reading material did not enhance comprehension, while Halbert (1943) and Strang (1941) found that pictures enhanced comprehension. Weintraub (1960) concluded that his subjects who read text without pictures attained better comprehension scores than the subjects who read material with pictures; but he noted later (Weintraub, 1966) that he felt that the lack of control over picture function had a confounding effect.

At least two researchers have, however, attempted to focus upon specific aspects of comprehension. Vernon (1953, 1954) did a series of studies in which she attempted, among other things, to measure the effects of pictures upon the retention of details, the sequencing of facts, and the major points of a long, difficult passage. Her recent conclusion (Vernon, 1964) seems to be that pictures enhance the recall of facts but, by the same token, over-emphasize facts, thereby distracting from the retention of ideas or the general gist of a passage. Koenke (1968) had pictures drawn to illustrate the main ideas of short, expository paragraphs and then at- tempted to measure the effects of the pictures upon children’s main idea statements. His conclusion, like that of Vernon, was that pictures did not enhance main idea comprehension.

It seems clear, however, that the procedures followed by Vernon and by Koenke were substantially different from those in typical reading situations. Vernon measured retention, whereas the ordinary situation would be one in which the reader has both passage and picture before him while he is answering questions. Koenke used extremely short, expository paragraphs, while a more realistic task would be one in which the passage, like commercial materials, is longer, perhaps a page or two, narrative in style, and accompanied by a picture either related to the main idea, relevant to the general context or relevant to a specific detail. Neither in- vestigator varied the relevance of the picture to the main idea, and both investi- gators had their subjects give oral responses rather than respond to written test items.

Answers to two specific questions were sought in the present study. (a) Will

‘Support for this study was provided by the Laboratory for Research in Basic Skills and the Wisconsin Research and Development Center for Cognitive Learning, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

CONTRIBUTION OF PICTURES TO CHILDREN’S COMPREHENSION 299

pupils’ ability to formulate and state the main idea of a passage approximating commercial reading material be enhanced by the provision of a related picture? ( b ) Will the main ideas evoked be enhanced more by a picture that is explicitly relevant to the main idea than by a picture that is simply relevant to the general content or to a specific detail of the passage?

METHOD Materials

Three 198-word passages adapted by Harris, Barrett, and Otto (1966) from Reader’s Digest Reading Skill Builders (RSB) were used in this study.2 The basis for the Harris.Barrett-Otto passage on the subject Eagles (E) can be found in RSB, Grade 6, Part 2, page 52. The main idea given by Harris, Barrett, and Otto is: Eagles stay with the same mate and nest for life. The basis for the second passage concerning the Polo (P) brothers can be found in RSB, Grade 5, Part 3, ages 65-66. The main idea is: Two traders from Venice brought China in touch with Europe. The gasis for the third passage can be found in RSB, Grade 5, Part 3, page 53. The main idea given is: Schintz (S) was unable to attract the attention of the plane. Since the main ideas of the passages are not ex- plicitly ‘stated the accepted main idea statement for each passage is the consensual statement of adults who read the passage for the purpose of deriving a main idea. Originally, the passage main ideas reflected consensuality among the staff of the Harris-Barrett-Otto investigation, and later, a t the time of the present study, the statement.s were checked by having fifty graduate students in education writ,e the main idea of each of the three passages. Three experienced judges then decided independently that 60% of the responses given by the graduate students were essentially the same as the consensually derived main idea statement; 30% of the statements were felt to be incomplete main ideas, and the remaining 10% were only t,angentially related to passage content.

Although the intent in rewriting the passages was to control length and readability, exact read- ability information was not given by Harris, Barrett, and Otto. Therefore, readability levels were calculated using the Dale-Chall formula (1948a, 194&b). Passage E contained 15 sentences and 15 words not on the ])ale list of 3,000 words and had a raw score of 5.4916. Passage S contained 17 sentences arid 11 words not on the Dale list and had a raw score of 5.0981. Passage P had 15 sentences, 9 words not on the Dale list and a score of 5.0018. The raw scores fall at the low end of the score band which denotes a difficulty level appropriate for grades five and six.

Since one objective of the study was to find out if relevancy of a passage would enhance the reader’s main idea responses, a specifically relevant and a generally relevant picture were drawn for each passage. Thus, the resulting pictures, 4 x 6-1/2 in. black and white drawings, were composed either to depict the essence of the main idea or simply to illustrate general or specific content of the passage.

The following description of one passage, its main idea and the two pictures will help to clarify the picture-passage relationship.

The Polo brothers passage includes narrative regarding their trading journey to Russia and Central Asia and description of their meeting with Kublai Khan, their subsequent nine-year visit in China, and the effects of their visit. The consensually derived main idea is: Two traders from Venice (the Polo brothers) brought China in touch with Europe. The specifically relevant illustrat,ion pictures tW(J men in Early Renaissance garb showing wares to an Oriental potentate. The generally relevant illustration pictures a caravan crossing the desert. The specifically relevant picture, at the very least, illustrates the portion of the passage wherein the essence of the main idea lies; whereas, the generally relevant picture illustrates a specific from the narrative portion of the passage.

The passages, typed in IBM’s large bookface, were multilithed on 8-1/2 x 11 in. paper. When a icture was t o accompany the passage, the icture and passage were integrated; that is, four or more Eries of type preceded the picture. Also, wgen the materials were placed into booklet form, the two

pages carrying a passage or a passage-and-picture faced each other.

Design and Subjects The design was a 2 x 3 x 3 factorial with two grades, three passages, and three modes of pre-

sentation. Although no measurable sex effect was e ected, equal numbers of boys and girls were assigned to each cell to balance any possible effect. Zi ldren from grades three and six were chosen as subjects because the decision was to examine the effect of pictures upon comprehension of the main idea under two conditions of readability: a difficult condition, where the second-graders read materials a t the fifth grade difficulty level; arid an easy condition, where the sixth graders read the same fifth grade level materials. Three passages-Eagles, Schintz and the Polo brothers-were used to provide some basis for assurance that any demonstrated effects would not be attributable to idio- syncracies of a single passage or a single set of picture-passage relationships. The three modes of presentation, which were the main focus of the study, were (a) passage accompanied by a picture s eciiically relevant to the main idea, (6) passage accompanied by a picture generally relevant to tEe main idea, and ( c ) passage without an accompanying picture.

*Permission to re-write and use the material was secured from The Reader’s Digest, Pleasantville, New York 10570.

300 KARL KOENKE AND WAYNE OTTO

The subjects were 45 girls and 45 boys in the third grade and 45 girls and 45 boys in the sixth grade of an elementary school in a rural-suburban community near Madison, Wisconsin. The boys and girls were randomly selected from a population of 240 pupils and randomly assigned, by grade and by sex, to the passage and mode conditions. Thus, 30 subjects from each grade level were assigned to each mode of presentation, with 5 boys and 5 girl8 reading each passage with each mode of pre- sentation.

Procedure ‘Each subject was tested individually. In order to build rapport and to develop a set among

subjects to respond in sentences, as they would be asked to do in giving their main idea respoiises, a standard warm-up sequence was employed. Briefly, the tester introduced himself, asked the subject for his name, called attention to the fact that the tester had used a seiitence in making the statement “My name is . . . .,” asked the subject to respond in a sentence, wrote both sentences, and followed the same procedure with a sentence in which the subject’s teacher was named.

No mentioii of the pictures or the function of pictures was made in the task directions, which were identical to those used by Otto and Barrett (1968). The subject was asked to think about what all the sentences together said while he read silently. Furthermore, prior to reading the subject was told that when he finished reading he was to make up one sentence in his own words that said what all the sentences together told him. When the subject looked up from his reading the tester asked, “What do all the sentences together tell you?” Ko effort was made to remove the passage and the question was repeated after ten seconds if the subject had not responded. The tester recorded the subject’s oral response verbatim.

Scoring and Analysis The scale for rating main idea responses described and used by Koenke (1968) and by Otto and

Barrett (1968) was modified for use in the present study. Each main idea response was assigned a value of one to five according to its rating on the 5-point scale that follows:

1. Not related to the passage. 2. Too specific, e.g., a sentence from the passage. 3. Too general, e.g., a single concept-“Eagles” or “The Polos.” 4. An incomplete main idea, e.g., “An eagle lives in the same nest for his whole life.” 5. A complete main idea.

A single score was assigned to each main idea statement on the basis of consensual ratings by a panel of three trained judges.

Separate two-way (Mode by Passage) analyses of variance were run for each grade level because differences Were apparent from preliminary examination of the data.

RESULTS The analysis of variance of the main idea ratings of the sixth grade subjects

who had read easy material, shows that the Mode main effect was significant ( p < .05), while the Passage main effect and the Mode x Passage interaction did not reach acceptable significance levels.

A post hoe comparison of the three Modes by means of the Tukey method, as found in Winer (1962), revealed that the response ratings of subjects who read passages accompanied by a specifically relevant picture ( M = 3.133, SD = 1.361) and the response ratings of subjects who read passages accompanied by a generally relevant picture ( M = 3.233, SD = .737) did not differ significantly, but the re- sponse ratings of both groups were significantly different ( p < .05) from the response ratings of subjects who read passages without pictures ( M = 2.533, SD = 1.292).

The analysis of variance of the main idea ratings of the third grade subjects who read difficult material showed non-significant main effects and a non-significant interaction effect. Neither the main effects nor the interaction effect were significant.

The results appear to indicate that (a) the response ratings of subjects who read the easy material were enhanced by the provision of pictures, ( b ) the degree of relevancy of the picture did not effect the responses of either those subjects reading easy or difficult material, and (c ) the three passages were equal in terms of ratings of main ideas evoked.

CONTRIBUTION OF PICTURES TO CHILDREN’S COMPREHENSION 30 1

DISCUSSION Sixth grade subjects who read passages accompanied by pictures responded

with main ideas which received significantly higher scale ratings than the responses of sixth grade subject’s who did not see the pictures. Inspection of the group means and individual scale scores indicates that the subjects who did not see the pictures responded generally with a specific sentence from the passage (a Category 2 rating); whereas, subjects who saw the pictures tended frequently to give overgeneral responses (Category 3), which embodied a single, title-like concept such as “eagles” or “the Polo brot.hers.” Perhaps a set to respond wit,h short, title-like statements is established by exposure to reading tests and exercises in which pupils are asked to “choose the best title.” On the basis of the finding regarding the role of pictures with sixth grade pupils, the following generalizations appear to be at least tentatively justified: (a ) Sixth grade pupils told to read to discover a main idea not explicitly stated in easy-to-read commercial material will look a t an accompanying picture and use it t>o enhance their understanding of the main idea as shown in their verbal responses. ( b ) Since Koenlie (1968) found, under similar conditions, that pictures did not enhance the main ideas evoked by short expository paragraphs (50 words or less), i t may be that pictures enhance main idea responses to longer passages only. (c) As long as pict’ures have general relevance to a topic, their presence is likely to enhance main idea responses even in the absence of explicit directions to attend to them. The finding of no significant difference between the main idea response ratings of sixth grade pupils who viewed generally and specifically relevant pictures appears at’ first, to be illogical, but a line of post hoc reasoning may serve to reconcile the finding wit,h one of Vernon’s (1966) conclusions. Vernon concluded that pictures enhance subjects’ retention of facts but not. their understanding of the “general gist” of a passage. As already noted, many of the responses of the present subjects who viewed the pictures were rated in Category 3, which includes single word/ concept responses. The suggestion, then, is that the present subjects who viewed the pictures failed generally t’o demonst’rate an understanding of the “general gist” of the passages; instead, t,hey tended to fixate upon a single word/concept, which was depicted in both the generally and specifically relevant pictures. Given the present illustrations and the present rat.ing scale, both types of pictures appear to have served to move the responses from Cfitegory 2 to Category 3. If the function of content relevant pictures is limited to helping subjects zero in on a single fact or concept, then the specificity or generality of the picture would be irrelevant with regard to getting the “gist” or main idea of a selection.

As already stated, the pictures did not appear to be of value to the third graders, who were reading difficult. materials. Since Otto and Batrett (1968) found third graders capable of giving main idea responses equivalent to Category 3 on the present scale, i t cannot be concluded t,hat the present third graders were inherently incapable of giving higher level responses. Rather, it is possible that the decoding problem kept t,hem from grasping enough of the passage content to make use of the pictures. Perhaps explicit direct,ions to look at, the pictures would have helped them. On the other hand, it should be noted that (a) Vernon (1954) found that direction to view a picture while content was being read aloud to the subject did not enhance retention and ( b ) 1l;oenlte found direction to view the picture did not enhance the main idea statements of subjects who had read short paragraphs.

302 KARL KOENKE AND WAYNE OTTO

Finally, the lack of significant differences among ratings of evoked main ideas to the three passages leads to the conclusions that (a) with the controls imposed the three passages were essentially similar in terms of content relevant to the present task, (b) materials with approximately a 5.0 raw score on the Dale-Chall scale, and therefore supposedly easy for pupils in the last month of sixth grade, cannot be assumed to be a basis from which a sixth grader can formulate a complete main idea with any degree of success. The latter does not mean that main idea com- prehension cannot be enhanced by lowering readability scores, for both Otto and Barrett (1968) and Koenke (1968) enhanced main idea scores by rewriting short grade-level passages at approximately first grade difficulty. It may be, though, that extreme simplification must take place before main idea comprehension, in terms of oral responses, is enhanced.

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