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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Educational Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1423163

Augmented Reality Books: In-depth Insights into Children's Reading Engagement

Provisionally accepted
Kawla Alhamad Kawla Alhamad *Andrew Manches Andrew Manches Sarah McGeown Sarah McGeown
  • University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Children's reading engagement is associated with the quality of their reading experiences and outcomes; however, research to date has only examined children's reading engagement within the context of traditional print books or digital texts. Augmented Reality represents a hybrid reading experience, where traditional paper books are augmented with digital features (e.g., animations, sounds, comprehension questions). This is the first study to examine children's perspectives and experiences of AR books, within the context of reading engagement. In total, 38 demographically diverse children (aged 8-10, 21 male, 17 English as an Additional Language, 14 ethnicities, nine with teacher-reported reading difficulties) from COUNTRY participated. After reading an AR book, children participated in interviews about their reading engagement. Deductive (themes) and inductive (subthemes) approaches to thematic analysis were used, examining children's AR reading experiences within the context of their behavioral, cognitive, affective and social engagement. The majority of children found AR books easy to use, and provided examples of how AR books supported their behavioral engagement (e.g., desire to read more/extend reading practices), altered their cognitive engagement (e.g., reading strategies, visual representation/use of imagination, comprehension monitoring), influenced their affective engagement: (e.g., diverse positive feelings), and social engagement (e.g., prompted interaction and discussion), providing examples suggesting similarities and differences with traditional print books. This paper provides novel in-depth insights into children's perspectives and experiences of AR books, and provides a foundation for researchers, educators, and AR book designers interested in better supporting children's reading experiences and outcomes with AR books. those wishing to support children's reading. To date, research has explored the potential value of AR in educational settings (e.g.

    Keywords: reading1, engagement2, Augmented Reality3, books4, Children5

    Received: 25 Apr 2024; Accepted: 16 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Alhamad, Manches and McGeown. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Kawla Alhamad, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.