Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1994. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was a difference in the level of reading comprehension of young readers when one group of students read an interactive CD-ROM storybook and another group of students read the same story from a conventionally printed book. The participants were 39 second-grade students from two intact classrooms in an urban elementary school in the Midwest.Students from one classroom read the story from an interactive CD-ROM storybook; students in the other classroom read the same story from a conventionally printed book. Students reading the CD-ROM storybook could ask the computer for pronunciation of unknown words. Students reading the conventionally printed book could ask the researcher to pronounce words they did not know. Words for which pronunciation was requested were recorded automatically by the computer; the researcher recorded the words requested by the book group. Students reading the CD-ROM storybooks requested the pronunciation of more words than those students reading the conventionally printed books.The following hypotheses were tested at the .05 level of significance:Hypothesis I: There will be no significant difference between the mean scores of reading comprehension on oral retellings for students reading a traditionally printed storybook and students reading the same text from an interactive CD-ROM storybook.Hypothesis II: There will be no significant difference between the mean scores of reading comprehension on a comprehension test for students reading a traditionally printed storybook and students reading the same text from an interactive CD-ROM storybook.An univariate analysis of variance was used to test the hypotheses. There was no significant difference in mean scores on the retellings between the two groups, therefore hypothesis I failed to be rejected.There was a significant difference in mean scores on the comprehension test between the two groups, therefore hypothesis II was rejected. When comprehension was measured through the use of comprehension questions, students reading the CD-ROM storybook scored higher. Although results were mixed on comprehension measures, observations from this study indicate that the use of CDROM storybooks may be beneficial for young children, particularly those who are reading below grade level. / Department of Elementary Education