Los niños como editores de un texto publicitario

Abstract

This study belongs to a set of studies aimed at investigating children’s solutions to a layout task (mise en page). In all the studies; a text appears on the computer screen as a single paragraph. The children’s task is to identify the type of text and then to edit it (i.e.; to arrange it until reaching a convenient graphic format). In this study; children aged 7 to 11 years old are dealing with an advertising text (a leaflet). Children employed various graphic resources with two main aims: to organize information and/or to highlight some of them. The resources employed were mainly: changes in typography; punctuation marks and the distribution of the text in the screen’s space. Children gain progressive coordination in managing these resources; as well as a better understanding about the properties of the intended graphic object. The analysis is centered on the progressive coordination of two distinctive functions attributed to the layout: legibility and visibility; both related to the discursive characteristics of a specific text. The interest of this research technique to explore “reading comprehension” is suggested in the Concluding Remarks.