| Helping behavior is an important type of prosocial behavior,which is of great significance to promoting children’s social development.Research has shown that in the course of a young child’s day,their helping behaviour can be acquired through reading picture storybooks,either on their own or through self-explanation reading guided by the teacher.In fact,in the practice of reading picture storybooks,adults tend to directly inform children of the moral of the story or express their own views,whether they are reading the story together or teaching it to teachers.The modern view of the child is that children are active learners and should take full advantage of their initiative.Self-explanation is the process by which children interpret the content of a picture storybook with adult prompting,children’s initiative is reflected in their own reading or self-explanation of picture storybooks;and self-explanation is not difficult or beyond children’s level.Guiding children in self-explanation while reading picture storybooks may facilitate their deeper understanding of the meaning of the story and its transfer to their daily practice.Given the relatively few studies that have been conducted by researchers examining the causal relationship between picture storybooks,self-explanation and helping behaviour through experimental methods.Based on social cognitive theory and the self-explanation effect,this study used a 2(picture storybooks: helping,neutral)× 2(self-explanation: self-explanation,no self-explanation)× 2(age: 4 years old,5 years old)between-subjects experimental design,to investigate the effects of reading picture storybooks and self-explanation on helping behaviour in young children,providing useful information for the development of helping behaviour in practice.Firstly,60 preschool undergraduate and postgraduate students were invited to assess the helpfulness of 10 picture story books,mainly in terms of helpful scenes,helpful content,fun,familiarity,difficulty,and pleasure,so as to select picture storybooks with a helpful theme and neutral picture story book materials,and finally three picture storybooks with a helpful theme and three neutral picture story books were selected as official experimental materials.Picture storybooks with a helping theme include Superworm,Helpful Owl,Frog is a Hero,and neutral storybooks include The Tiny Seed,The Rainbow Flower,and Fun Seed.The researcher sampled a whole group of 160 children from two kindergartens in Chongqing as the study population and randomly assigned 160 children to either the Helpful Picture Storybook situation(experimental group)or the Neutral Picture Storybook situation(control group).The researcher ensured that after each child read either the Helpful Picture Story Book or the Neutral Picture Story Book individually and consecutively,all children completed the Dictator Game task to assess helping behaviour.Finally,the collected experimental data were subjected to a 2(picture storybook)× 2(self-explanation)× 2(age)analysis of covariance,controlling for gender as a covariate,to examine the main effects of picture storybook,explanatory style and age on the effects of helping behaviour in young children and their interactions.The results of the study found that:(1)Continuous reading of picture story books with a helping theme significantly increased helping behaviour in children compared to neutral picture story books;(2)Overall,5-year-old children showed significantly more helping behaviors than 4-year-olds.(3)5-year-olds showed significantly more helping behaviours in the context of reading a picture story with a helping theme than did 4-year-olds;(4)Self-explanation significantly increased helping behaviour in the context of reading a picture story book with a helping theme compared to non-self-explanation.In view of the above findings,this study proposes the following educational recommendations for the development of helping behaviour in young children: Firstly,reading picture story books can be an effective educational tool for the development of helping behaviour in young children.On the one hand,educators should fully explore the helping elements in picture storybooks and integrate the development of helping behaviour into children’s lives and education;at the same time,kindergartens should ensure investment in picture story books with helping themes and create conditions for children to read picture story books with helping themes.On the other hand,educators should emphasise the importance of selecting picture storybooks with a helping theme for children,choosing picture story books that are appropriate to children’s physical and mental development and age characteristics,examining the theme,helpfulness,language,images,plot and other dimensions of picture story books to understand children’s picture storybook preferences,and choosing picture storybooks that are enjoyable.Secondly,self-explanation while reading picture storybooks with a helping theme is reinforced to increase children’s helping behaviour.First,educators should focus on children’s engagement with picture storybook reading.Self-explanation is a construct that children generate themselves rather than a teacher’s interpretation,and self-explanation when reading picture storybooks can increase helping behaviour.Therefore,teachers should change their indoctrination approach to picture storybook reading,fully stimulate children’s subjectivity,induce self-explanation,and allow children to actively participate in picture storybook reading and social learning,learning helping behaviour through interaction with picture storybooks.Second,educators should use prompts effectively to trigger self-explanation.Teachers should carefully design questions and use prompts according to children’s level,choose the right time to apply them,scaffold children’s understanding of the story’s meaning and extract its themes,and induce children to deepen their understanding and transfer of social norms through self-explanation.Finally,educators should develop self-explanatory training in picture storybook reading to increase children’s helping behaviour.Given that self-explanation in the context of reading a picture storybook can significantly increase children’s helping behaviour,educators can develop and apply self-explanation training programmes that are appropriate for young children to effectively increase their helping behaviour. |
