The use of multimedia story applications on touch-interactive mobile deviceshas become prevalent in early education settings. However, despite the promise of mul-timedia story applications for early learning outcomes, there has been a dearth of researchon the educational benefits of such tools, and whether their effects can be strengthenedwith the integration of questioning strategies. This study investigated the effects of mul-timedia story reading and questioning on children’s literacy skills, including vocabularylearning, story comprehension and reading engagement. Using a 2 (multimedia vs.paper)92 (question vs. no question) design, a total of 72 participants were randomlyassigned to one of four conditions: multimedia story reading, multimedia story readingwith questioning, paper story reading, and paper story with questioning. To identify theeffects of Media and Questioning on children’s vocabulary learning, story comprehension,and reading engagement, we conducted a series of two-way ANCOVAs, controlling fordifferent covariates as appropriate. The results showed significant interaction of media andquestioning on target vocabulary and significant main effect of media for engagement, butthe results showed no significant main effects of either media or questioning for com-prehension. This study demonstrated research tools to examine children’s learning andengagement with interactive mobile devices, and suggested potential benefits of multi-media story reading and questioning for learning. We discuss implications of these findingsfor the design and use of multimedia storybook

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• Effects of multimedia story reading and questioningon preschoolers’ vocabulary learning, storycomprehension and reading engagement