An Exploration of the Impact of Quality Illustrations in Children’s Picture Books on Preschool Student Narrative Ability

Narrative language development is one of the early literacy skills necessary for proficient reading and writing achievement. The correlation between narrative skills and later writing ability indicates that more advanced and complex narrative generation and recall is linked to later writing output. In this experimental study, 47 preschool students participated in an intervention focusing on the impact of high-quality illustrations on narrative ability. Results show a significant effect of intervention participation on narrative language measures in language complexity, narrative retelling, story comprehension, vocabulary usage, and episodic components. These findings suggest that attention to artistic devices used in illustrations paired with picture book study can increase student narrative ability