I’m attending yet another conference, so my posts might get a little shorter and more sparse this week, but… It’s also a visualization conference, so perhaps I’ll be inspired!

A Reuters article today cites newly-published research showing that infants and toddlers learn from pictures! To quote, “Illustrations in picture books go beyond entertaining children and teach them how to navigate the world, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association on Sunday.”

Evidently, the way young’ns interact with images has not been well studied up to this point, so the research brings an added level of rigor to the discussion of using visuals for early-age instruction.

A tantalizing line in the article states that “The results varied according to the children’s ages and whether a photograph or drawing was used,…” Leaving me crying out for more. Varied how? Photos versus drawings? Which was better? How do kids interpret drawings versus photos in terms of depicting reality? So many questions! I couldn’t track down the article, however, so the questions remain unanswered for now.

The research was done in part by Judy DeLoache at the University of Virginia Child Study Center.