With or with out AI, inform kids a narrative nicely | EUROtoday

On Apr 22, 2025

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IThere are alternative ways to inform a narrative to a toddler. Improvising a storyteller, with no different help than his personal voice, is one, studying an illustrated ebook is one other. With digital know-how, the out there audio ebook vary is diversified. And with the arrival of synthetic intelligence (AI), the probabilities are multiplying.

Each of those modalities has its charms and its results. But how does the kid actually perceive these totally different codecs? How does the vector of the story affect his consideration, his understanding or his creativeness? How can these assorted approaches form its relationship to language and narration itself? The analysis gives us some tracks to see extra clearly.

Tell “simply” the story: the magic of orality

Imagine an grownup talking to inform a narrative with none visible help, utilizing solely his voice, his gaze, his gestures. The baby, captivated, listens and makes his personal photographs in his head. Here, every thing goes by means of the intonation, the rhythm and the expressiveness of the storyteller.

It is an actual oral spectacle, a dwelling transmission which may adapt in actual time: the storyteller sees if the kid follows, if he’s intrigued or perplexed, and might re -explain or insist on sure particulars. On the one hand, it stimulates the creativeness: no imposed photographs, the kid invents his personal units. On the opposite hand, even with out visible help, the fixed adjustment of the storyteller to the kid’s reactions can help, even enhance the understanding of the story.

Read too How to assist her baby belief himAccording to the outcomes of a examine revealed by Rebecca Isbell and his colleagues in Early Childhood Education Journal In 2004, kids from 3 to five years previous uncovered to purely oral tales demonstrated a greater understanding than those that heard the identical tales learn in a ebook. This direct, versatile and reactive interplay locations the kid on the coronary heart of narrative dialogue, extra simply elevating ambiguities and strengthening the relevance of orality within the studying course of.

Shared studying: a wealthy second of complicity

The nice traditional stays the studying of an illustrated ebook. We open the album, we uncover the drawn characters, their expressions, the colourful landscapes. The illustrations primarily seize the eye of kids throughout shared studying. This visible focus can play a key function within the world understanding of historical past, offering visible clues complementary to the textual content.

Read too Caroline Goldman: “To assign a child to character traits is to give up educating him” This sharing mode is especially efficient in enriching vocabulary, awakening the kid to studying and serving to him develop visible and textual benchmarks, as Maryanne Wolf, a toddler growth specialist, Proust and Calamar (Bee and Castor, 2015). With the paper ebook, you may return, touch upon a element, level the finger at a personality, briefly, create a really concrete interplay.

Admittedly, the fastened picture limits the creativeness somewhat, however it’s a treasured help for studying phrases and understanding the narrative body, particularly within the little ones. In addition, the ebook, as a well-recognized object, reinforces this sense of proximity and sharing.

Listen to an audio ebook: immerse your self in voice and sounds

After shared studying, one other format is gaining reputation: audio books. The latter permit the kid to immerse himself in a sound universe: an usually skilled voice, generally accompanied by music or sound results.

The expertise is immersive and might change into very nice: you may shut your eyes, think about the scenes, let your thoughts wander. However, not like the state of affairs the place the storyteller or mum or dad is current, the recording doesn’t will let you interrupt to ask a query. This subsequently requires extra autonomy and focus capability.

Studies point out that audio books can encourage kids, specifically these with studying difficulties, discover new tales and develop their cautious listening capability. For the youngest, help by an grownup is commonly needed, if solely to re-explain an unknown phrase. This purely auditory format can even refine the sensitivity of the kid to the nuances of voice and language.

AI, a brand new storyteller at hand?

Recently, AI has entered the dance. Tools similar to Chatgpt can, on demand, invent an entire story, change its fashion, adapt the extent of language, reply kids’s questions, reformulate advanced passages or immediately clarify an unknown phrase. We can thus create a customized story during which the kid turns into the hero, or ask the AI to “rewrite” a scene by including extra suspense, humor or poetry.

This unprecedented flexibility makes it simple to work together with a modular narrative supply. For instance, a current examine by Ying Xu and his colleagues (2022) and revealed within the newspaper Child Development has proven that conversational brokers can reproduce the advantages of “dialogical reading” made with an grownup, an interactive strategy the place the kid is invited to reply questions on historical past, which strengthens their dedication and understanding. These brokers, by asking open questions and offering appropriate suggestions, have improved kids’s dedication and their narrative understanding.

Read too Will synthetic intelligence be in the future endowed with feelings? This analysis highlights the potential of clever brokers to play a complementary academic function, particularly when human interplay will not be out there. Their skill to mimic dialogical studying confirms the significance of interplay within the narrative course of.

Nevertheless, AI doesn’t but have the sensitivity or the finesse of a human storyteller who is aware of the kid nicely and is aware of interpret his non -verbal reactions: facial expressions, posture, fluctuating consideration. She does probably not “understand” the story or the feelings it arouses. She can not spontaneously adapt her story in keeping with the temper of the second or select essentially the most applicable morality within the household or cultural context.

In the longer term, enhancing AI fashions and their rising capability to combine sensory or contextual information may refine this expertise. AI may thus higher perceive the person preferences of the kid (themes, linguistic difficulties, favourite fashion), supply extra nuanced tales, and even work in complementarity with different helps (photographs generated by AI, tailored sound results, and so forth.).

If this know-how doesn’t exchange the human storyteller or conventional studying, it could nonetheless change into an extra device, out there at any time, to complement the narrative universe of the kid, arouse their curiosity and help its studying.

What results on the kid?

Each of those modes offers plenty of distinctive advantages. The oral account encourages interplay and creativity. Reading an illustrated ebook helps language studying, prepares for studying and strengthens the hyperlink with mother and father. The audio ebook develops listening to focus, whereas AI brings unpublished flexibility and availability.

None of those codecs removes the others. They are complementary. The necessary factor is to fluctuate the pleasures and adapt the selection to the age and the tastes of the kid. After the session, discussing the story is crucial: what did he like? What does he perceive? What phrases have been new?

Read too Children play much less and it’s not with out penaltiesInteractive approaches similar to dialogical studying, described by researchers Grover J. Whitehurst and Christopher J. Lonigan, present that energetic alternate between adults and kids facilitate the appropriation of the story and the event of language abilities.

To uncover

The kangaroo of the day

Answer

The publicity of kids to tales, regardless of the approaches used, advantages in the long run from the event of their language, their consideration and their creativeness and in addition performs a vital function within the transmission of cultural and household references.

* Frédéric Bernard eSt Master of conferences in neuropsychology on the University of Strasbourg (Bas-Rhin) and member of the engineering, IT and imagery laboratory.

https://www.lepoint.fr/debats/avec-ou-sans-l-ia-comment-bien-raconter-une-histoire-aux-enfants-22-04-2025-2587999_2.php