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Given the increasing use of app books with young children, research is needed to inform their selection and design. Although broad guidelines exist, more fine-grained guidance is needed. To address this need, we explored the relations among app books’ digital affordances, readers’ behaviors with these affordances during both buddy and individual reading sessions, and their individual outcomes. Fifty-three kindergarteners (ages 5.05–6.46 years; M = 5.60, SD = 0.42) read 12 app books twice each across 24 buddy reading sessions and four app books once each across four individual reading sessions, and their comprehension was assessed after each individual reading session. Multivariate, mixed response analysis found that (a) when a greater number of minimum hotspots were available per page, retelling was better; and (b) availability of word hotspots was linked to better critical thinking/inference outcomes. Implications include choosing app books with affordances that this study showed support particular reading outcomes, in alignment with instructional goals.

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Interactive app books are increasingly part of young children’s literacy ecosystem. However, most previous studies examined buddy reading with traditional print books or CD-ROM books. Little is known about whether and how buddy reading with app books might be related to subsequent individual reading. To address this, informed by multimodal literacy and sociocultural theories, we investigated how 53 kindergarteners’ (ages 5–6 years) buddy reading behaviors were related to their subsequent individual reading behaviors and comprehension outcomes while reading app books. Multivariate mixed response analysis yielded these findings: (1) buddy reading monitoring behaviors (asked questions, drew attention to book content, debated, or negotiated) were associated with higher inference/critical thinking and vocabulary meaning generation scores; (2) buddies who read in triads had lower individual-prompted retelling scores than buddies who read in dyads. The findings highlight the importance of promoting monitoring during buddy reading and paying attention to group size.

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