LEGIBILITY IN CHILDHOOD: METHODOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF AN

EXPERIMENT ON PRINTED AND DIGITAL READING

This text part of a research project in progress, proposes that, from
experimental activities, assess how the children performed reading didactic books both
in print and in digital.
Therefore has the general objective: develop the methodology of an
experiment with children the 3rd Series of the first cycle of the public schools of
Brazilian educational to examine the legibility of the printed and digital text
(more specifically the use of the childrens characters and the use of calligraphic
cursive style) so that in future, the results may contribute to create conditions
favorable reading in didactic books for children.
Some are worth mentioning questions and serve as support for the
development of research: If children are increasingly familiar with digital texts, the use
of childrens characters (Figure 01) would not show improvement in the conditions of
reading performed by children? With the frequent use of digital reading in schools and
in everyday beginning readers, it would be correct to say that the cursive style does not
present more favorable reading conditions?

Figure 01: Children and adults characteres.

According to the Brazilian government, with the aim to ensure universal access
of technology, will distribute 600 thousand tablets to 58 thousand high schools in the
public school system in 2012.
Regarding the legibility of text in digital artifacts, there are some disagreements
among researchers. Some authors (Almeida, 2008; Rouet, 2003; Nielsen, 2000)
emphasize that reading on digital artifacts can be considered more tiring and slow.
Others (Venkiteshwar M. Subbaram, 2004; Muter & Marutto, 1991) do not confirm that
reading on screen is necessarily slower and more tiring than reading printed material.
Methodological Development
Through visits to municipal schools in the city of Joo Pessoa, Paraba State,
Brazil, and contact with teachers, specifications for the implementation of the
experiment were developed. For the aims of the study it was chosen to work with
children able to read the whole words and not syllable by syllable, this stage of reading
is in the third series of the 1st cycle of the Brazilian public school scheme, with children
8 years old.

In the three schools visited the number of students per class is 25 on average.
Thus it was defined that the number of individuals for each variable would be 25
students. There are 2 variables: the childrens characters and the cursive calligraphic
style.
The groups for evaluation were divided as follows (Figure 02):

Figure 02: Groups of children and variables for the experiment.

The methods chosen for evaluation in the experiment are:

Figure 03: Methods.

The texts for the tests were created from the didactic books that are used in
Brazilian schools (Figure 04).

Figure 04: Sample page from the book of the Third Year of Editora Scipione.

In Brazil, some publishers already offer digital textbooks. The main aspect of
the digital page book is the same as the page of the printed book. There was only a
transposition from one medium to another (Figure 05).

Figure 05: Detail of the text of the digital didactic book.

The tests will be conducted in familiar environments for children, the classroom
itself. The digital reading will be done on their own computer lab. The ideal would be to
conduct the experiment on tablets, however, the government has not yet released in
the colleges.
During the experiment, students will be called separately in order to have no
interference from other students and no contact with the test text. They will be
requested to read aloud and the reading will be recorded to better determination of the
results.
Each testing group will receive a card reading. The group of printed reading will
receive the text test printed in black on A4 white paper. The digital reading group will
receive a digital screen slide with the text test also in black text and white background.
The text test was created very similar to the texts of the books in the schools surveyed.
The experiment is planned to be held in the first semester of 2013 .This article it
was hoped to detail the main methodological procedures of a thesis in progress.

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