ABSTRACT
This chapter describes important “lessons learned” over the past decade in research on lab-based studies of children’s e-book reading. Our first lesson notes that research needs to keep up with the rapidly changing pace of technology. Second, we highlight the challenge of creating generalizable findings, given the many types of e-book features available. Our third lesson speaks to the context for the reading interaction, including what happens before the child steps into the lab. Lesson four focuses on the need for innovative methods for quantifying language, behavioral/emotional engagement, and caregiver-child interaction. Finally, our fifth lesson relates to the use of measures to help capture multiple facets of learning. Although we describe the challenges in lab-based e-book studies, we also note the valuable insights gleaned from the existing literature and highlight exciting opportunities for future research. E-books have great potential for education in today’s tech-focused childhood. Researchers studying these issues have the opportunity to collaborate to create generalizable and useful knowledge about how parents and children interact with and learn from e-books.
