Picture-Text Compounds in Early Reading: A Descriptive Review

Early reading materials commonly include the simultaneous presentation of pictures and text. Despite the ubiquity of picture-text compounds, several researchers have found that this arrangement may impair the word-reading performances of young children. Specifically, a learner may accurately respond when the picture and text are presented together but show reduced accuracy when the text is presented alone. Additional research has not reported these same effects; yet, given the considerable range in participants, procedures, and experimental designs in this literature, it is unclear when or for whom picture-text compounds may impede reading performance. This descriptive review provides a synthesis of articles that compared participants' word-reading performance during picture-text compound and text-only arrangements. Participant characteristics, target description, training and testing procedures, experimental design, and findings were coded for each article. A total of 37 experiments met the inclusion criteria, the small majority of which reported detrimental effects of picture-text compounds on word-reading performance (64.9%). Null findings were most common in experiments that utilized between-subjects designs, although procedural arrangements and participant descriptions varied considerably across experiments. Additional research is needed to better describe the conditions that may promote or inhibit control by the text in picture-text compounds and learner characteristics or histories that might predict these or similar overselective performances.