What is it about?
When listening to a story, the degree to which an individual is engaged can affect how well they comprehend what they are hearing. In everyday life, when multiple demands are placed on us at once, greater mental effort is required to stay focused and perform well. Our study therefore investigates how the type of content children listen to, and how much they enjoy it, influences their ability to successfully complete a second task simultaneously.
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Why is it important?
We found that stories children rated more as interesting resulted in longer reaction times when instructed to press an arrow key. This work highlights that mental resources are limited and therefore we cannot give 100% to all tasks at a given point. Our results suggest that children’s engagement with auditory narratives can be measured objectively, and that engagement varies across stories in a manner that is similar to adults.
Perspectives
I hope this article sheds some light on how children’s behaviour can be similar and different than adults as they grow and develop. This work has snowballed into more child-focused research with narratives, with a new study recently featured in CBC London.
Rafaela Platkin
Western University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Objective and Subjective Measures of Children's Engagement With Auditory Narratives, Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, February 2026, American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA),
DOI: 10.1044/2025_jslhr-25-00646.
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