Pop-up books have existed since the 19th Century, but one 21st Century study shows that pop-up books don’t work well as learning tools for children.
Recently Miller-McCune covered research led by Medha Tare, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. In a Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology report, her team explored how different kinds of picture books can educate young children. The experiments compared how much young children learned from pop-up books, illustrated books, and photo books about animals. In two experiments, pop-up book readers fared the worst in answering questions about the featured animals.
One member of the University of Virginia research team, Judy DeLoache, theorized in the article: “[W]hen children have been encouraged to manipulate and play with something, it becomes harder for them to grasp the fact that object is actually a symbol of something else. They’re more focused on the object they’re manipulating and less concerned with what it’s supposed to represent.”