Visual Literacy (Picture Book) and Childhood

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Visual Literacy (Picture Book) and Childhood
The content of a picture book and how it is used for learning have both positive and negative effects on children’s social behavior. There is an active and intense debate across the globe regarding whether the content of picture books improves aggressiveness or prosocial behaviors among children (Greitemeyer & Mügge 579). Generally, families tend to control the content of picture books that their children access. The idea is to ensure that their children access the right content with less violent images that are likely to improve their level of aggression. Therefore, the work focuses on how visual learning from picture books impacts children’s behaviors.
The role of a picture in a book is seen to have some meaning that are important to readers to evaluate. Actually, the role of images in picture books is to bring an emotional character and provide an aesthetic experience which is associated with the formalistic qualities of the visual image. The images give perception that words cannot fully express such as colors used in the drawings (Catalano 12). Additionally, they provide the reader with elements that are easily understood. Therefore, picture books will draw a child to its visual content which may ultimately change their behavior either positively or negatively depending on the content of the item that they are reading. For instance, a child who loves reading cartoons will have good behaviors than those who are exposed to violent images. A child who is exposed to violent pictures will not understand the objective of the content and will try to mimic what they see. Similarly, a child who is exposed to picture books with moral contents is likely to grow up with good behaviors.
Similarly, visual experience is considered as one of the best ways of teaching children. Specifically, the visual experience can be achieved through using picture books to teach children (Law 1). The idea is supported by a research that was done on 22 children who were aged between five and six years and four teachers were also included in the study. The children were exposed to various methods of learning and the outcome revealed that the group that was exposed to learning through picture books was more able to analyze texts than the other groups ((Law 1). Pictures encourage a child to be an active questioner which is important in the analysis and transformation of texts. The same applies to children who are exposed to books that have graphic contents which attracts their attentions. The graphic content will encourage children to be inquisitive regarding what they read which will have a great impact on their lives. Children will tend to shape their behavior in line with what they see in the picture books.
Further, children always tend to copy the behaviors that they observe in their surroundings. The idea is supported by the role of parents and teachers in shaping a child’s behavior. Generally, children acquire information from both outside and inside their classrooms which shape their minds in determining what is wrong and right in future (Heinsbergen 1). In-fact, children learn from a wide subject area during their early childhood education...