What impact do pictures in reading books have on Early Years reading comprehension of texts?

The aim of this research was to explore the link between pictures within Early Years reading books and how they can affect the readers’ comprehension of the story. The reading strategies used by the participants were mainly phonetic decoding and blending. This and verbal interactions during reading the books determined their verbal expressions and understanding when asked comprehension questions. This research involved a crossover design of two books. There were eighteen participants, aged between four and five years, they were split into two groups. Each participant read one book with and without the pictures. Using this approach and then submitting the participants to comprehension questions shed light on the idea that there could possibly be a link between reading comprehension and the implementation of pictures within Early Years reading books. At the beginning of the research the initial outcome predicted that the images in books hinder the comprehension, however the resultant findings were insightful. There are different linguistic factors that could have affected the reading comprehension; some of these will be explored in this paper. Ultimately, this research is about aiding the development of readers’ comprehension at this foundation stage. Throughout the findings, there was interesting use of decoding, segmenting and blending of the lexis; when the participants were reading, especially with some words that could be presumed to be a word that is used regularly they struggled to recognise. However the information gathered from the research is that there is not enough focus on comprehension when assessing Early Years reading development.