Understanding narratives in different media formats: Processes and products of elementary-school children’s comprehension of texts and videos

This study investigated similarities and differences in children’s (N = 83, grades 4–6) narrative comprehension between text, audio, and non-verbal video, including measures of both comprehension products and processes. The aim was to understand how children engage with information across various media and, in doing so, address inconsistent findings in the existing literature. Comprehension products were assessed through open-ended questions and recall, and comprehension processes through think-aloud protocols. Results revealed that children answered more comprehension questions correctly for video versions of the narratives than for text versions, particularly children with lower reading comprehension skills. No advantage of video over text was found for the recall task. Think-aloud responses during narrative comprehension revealed similar processing patterns for text and video, with a general tendency to report information close to the story rather than elaborate based on background knowledge. However, video versions prompted children to activate background knowledge to a greater extent than did text versions, suggesting an advantage of video at the situation-model level. Notably, differences between video and text versions cannot be attributed solely to the absence of decoding demands in video, as similar differences were found between video and audio versions. These results suggest (a) considerable similarities in both process and product across media, but (b) non-verbal videos elicit more situation-model processes than texts do, (c) non-verbal videos have an advantage over text with regard to performance on the comprehension questions, especially for less-skilled comprehenders. These findings illustrate the nuanced relationship between media affordances and comprehension processes and outcomes.