Learning and Language Development in Children Through Parent-Child Reading
Abstract
Most parents are filled with questions on how best to support their children’s learning and language development, knowing that those skills are necessary for their children’s future success. The field of developmental psychology dedicates itself to answering these questions, and this review of four landmark studies will answer one such question and explore how reading to infants affects their language development and future learning abilities. There is strong evidence suggesting that engaging with children through parent-child reading can help significantly promote their language development and learning abilities. In this paper, the most effective ages, styles, and methods surrounding parent-child reading will be examined, forming a solid conclusion on the efficacy of reading to infants, as well as children of all ages.
Parent-child reading and joint attention
When asked to engage in parent-child reading, parents often assume their children will only directly benefit from the reading as it broadens their vocabulary and helps them become more familiar with the act of reading. In reality, parent-child reading can have hidden benefits. Parent-child reading can benefit a child’s attention span and set them up for better vocabulary skills in the future, long before they start actively adding to their vocabulary. Farrant and Zubrick (2013) focused on vocabulary size to assess children’s school readiness. They explored the effects of parent-child reading and how vocabulary size is predicted by a secondary mechanism of parent-child reading: joint attention. They analyzed the results of the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, which consisted of data on joint attention, parent-child reading, and vocabulary skills from around 9 months of age to about 5 years of age. Joint attention can be defined as a shared focus with another individual on the same object, person, or action. This involves following the direction of another individual’s attention (for example, a parent drawing an infant’s gaze towards something by pointing). Caretakers facilitate word learning as they often label an object after drawing an infant’s attention to it, highlighting the importance of joint attention for children’s language development. One of the most effective ways joint attention is utilized is through parent-child reading, as it largely consists of gesturing towards pictures and labeling them. It has been established that high levels of joint attention and parent-child reading in infancy furthers language development and vocabulary growth.
Farrant & Zubrick (2013) predicted that children who had low levels of parent-child reading and joint attention in infancy would be less school-ready by 5 years of age due to poorer vocabulary skills. They set out to measure school-readiness and vocabulary skills by an adapted version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III (PPVT-III), which measures hearing vocabulary in 2-6 year old children. Parent-child reading was measured through self-report questionnaires, in which parents were asked to report the average amount of minutes per day they spent reading with their child. Joint attention was measured through a portion of the Communication and Symbolic Behaviour Scales, with the relevant questions focusing on children’s attention to novel stimuli and how well they are able to redirect their caretakers’ attention to said stimuli. Just as they hypothesized, children with low levels of joint attention in infancy had significantly poor vocabulary skills at school-age, scoring in the bottom 20% of their age group on the PPVT-III. Children whose parents reported low levels of parent-child reading were more likely to have poor vocabulary skills. This study demonstrates the importance of parent-child reading not solely as a primary mechanism for enhancing language development but as a tool to hone secondary mechanisms, such as joint attention, that contribute to language development. The frequent pointing gestures and word labeling that characterize parent-child reading increase children’s level of joint attention, which contributes to strong vocabulary skills in the future.
Regarding the relevant question on whether there is a benefit to reading to infants, this research indicates that parent-child reading in infancy has a significant effect on levels of joint attention, which then predicts infants’ vocabulary skills later in life, specifically at school-age. In order to help infants benefit as much as possible from reading time, the parent should focus on drawing the infant’s attention to the pictures in the book and labeling as much as possible through parent-child reading as frequent as 6-7 days a week, for at least 40-60 minutes a day.
Optimal ages for parent-child reading
Karrass and colleagues (2005) investigated whether reading to infants affected their language abilities. They initially assessed 87 middle-class infants at 4 and 8 months of age and followed up with them at 12 and 16 months of age to re-examine their expressive and receptive language abilities. The researchers predicted that infants whose parents read to them frequently starting at 8 months of age were more likely to have better language abilities at 12 and 16 months of age. They also predicted that reading to 4-month-old infants would have no effect on their future language abilities. Furthermore, the researchers differentiated between expressive language, which refers to language production (such as vocabulary skills), and receptive language, which refers to language comprehension (such as word familiarity). The effects of parent-infant reading on each type of language were evaluated through an examination of children’s expressive language and receptive language at 12 and 16 months of age.
The participants were sent home with an Infant Care and Activity Sheet and asked to log the hours and relative frequency in which they engaged in parent-infant reading. The infants’ language abilities were measured at 4, 8, 12, and 16 months of age. During lab visits, the infants were assessed using the Bayley Mental Scale (a clinical test that measures typical infant development), specifically, with its items concerning expressive and receptive language. Their parents were then asked to report their child’s development on the Sequenced Inventory of Communicative Development-Revised, Expressive and Receptive scales (a parent survey evaluating typical infant communication skills). Infants who were read to at 8 months of age scored higher on language assessments compared to infants who were not read to. Specifically, the infants who were read to showed stronger expressive language skills, but there was no significant relationship found between reading at 8 months of age and receptive language skills.
The findings of this study supported the researchers' hypothesis that reading at 4 months of age would not be significantly related to improved language abilities at 12 and 16 months of age, but that reading at 8 months of age would lead to better language abilities at both 12 and 16 months of age. This study highlights the importance of reading to 8-month-old children, as parent-infant reading was shown to produce higher expressive language scores, demonstrating the effect of shared reading on children’s language production. The researchers note that there was no significant relationship between reading at 4 months of age and future expressive or receptive language skills. As noted by Karass and colleagues (2005), there is a great deal of neural speech perception and language processing that occurs between 4 months and 8 months of age, so there are insufficient language processing skills at 4 months of age for reading to be directly impactful for future language skills. As noted above by Farrant and Zubrick (2013), reading is still recommended for joint attention development and parent-child relationship-building, and, as noted by this study, families who engaged in parent-child reading at 4 months of age were highly likely to continue with shared reading at 8 months of age as the habit of shared reading has already been established.
This study highlights a key component of the parent’s question on whether parent-child reading helps promote language development and learning abilities, demonstrating that there is an optimal age (8 months of age) for observing the direct benefit of parent-child reading. This article concludes that there is no observable direct benefit to reading to very young infants (4 months of age), but it in no way discourages it. The researchers emphasized that children who were read to at 4 months were more likely to be read to at 8 months, and therefore more likely to demonstrate improved language skills.
Interventions in parent-child reading
Huebner (2000) demonstrated that not all parent-child reading is equally effective in strengthening children’s future language skills. Through four waves of recruitment in the form of community advertisements, she recruited 129 families, 88 of whom received specialized training in reading techniques to use with their 2-year-old children. These families were assigned to a dialogic reading program, taught to them by local librarians. The remaining 41 families served as a control group and were asked to continue their rate and style of parent-child reading as usual. Dialogic reading aims to further children’s oral language development by encouraging active participation in the reading process and urging children to think beyond the story’s scope to more abstract concepts. Parents were advised to provide frequent feedback to their children throughout the reading process in the form of praise, elaboration, and open-ended questions, and advised to reduce simplistic questions (e.g. pointing questions or yes/no) and criticism. The parents then used these techniques while reading to their children for 5-10 minutes each day for a three-week duration. Huebner observed how this dialogic reading intervention would affect both the children and parents. She predicted this intervention would further the children’s oral language development and lower their parents’ stress levels. Huebner found that the children in the intervention group scored higher on assessments of expressive (spoken) language and showed improved reading habits, such as more active engagement in the reading process. They spoke more frequently during the reading process and crafted more complex comments and questions about the narrative. The parents of these groups also reported less parenting stress, which Huebner predicts was due to the daily reading. The daily reading allowed the children to practice independence, which might have led them to be less disagreeable throughout the day.
This study highlighted how certain types of parent-child reading can be more effective for children’s language abilities than others, specifically when it is an interactive process that encourages creative thought, such as dialogic reading. In terms of the parent’s question on whether parent-child reading helps promote language development and learning abilities, this study demonstrates that it is important to incorporate interaction into the reading process in order to improve children's oral language skills. This type of interactive reading can also lead to less parenting stress, as it allows children to exercise some autonomy during the day and parents find themselves dealing with less stubbornness and tantrums during the rest of the day’s activities.
Literacy and environmental influence
Rodriguez and colleagues (2009) investigated the impact of low-income children’s early literacy environment on their language skills. They isolated three factors to observe in depth: 1. maternal sensitivity (how engaged and responsive mothers are with their children); 2. literacy activities; and 3. availability of literacy materials. The researchers observed that while on average low-income children scored low on language assessments, there was greater variety and individual differences in scores within this population compared to children from higher-income families, suggesting that there are additional factors that may contribute to children’s language skills. The sample consisted of 1046 mothers, whose children were assessed at 14, 24, and 36 months of age. The researchers sought to observe how the unique aspects of maternal sensitivity, literary activities, and literacy materials would influence children’s language skills and at which ages these influences would be the most impactful for children’s language development. Data was collected through maternal interviews, observed mother-child play sessions, and self-report surveys. The assessments used were the Bayley Mental Development Index (measuring children’s cognitive functioning and language skills), the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories Short Form (a parent report of their children's vocabulary comprehension and production), and the PPVT-III. This study found that children with better literacy environments (sufficient literacy activities, learning materials, and maternal sensitivity) overall performed better on language and cognitive development assessments. They only isolated one significant interaction between these factors, which was that, at 36 months of age, higher maternal sensitivity and learning materials correlated with higher language scores. In general, learning materials had the strongest effect when accompanied with high maternal sensitivity.
These findings show how essential a proper literacy environment is for children’s language skills, as well as the importance of learning materials and parental attention as a way to counteract the pre-disposed disadvantage of poverty on children’s language development. With regards to the parent’s question on reading to infants and the effects on future learning abilities, this article demonstrated the overall importance of literacy at home in order to ensure one’s child has the best possible track for language development, especially for children from low SES backgrounds that are at-risk for developmental difficulties. This article also highlights the importance of parent-child engagement with literacy materials as literacy activities and maternal sensitivity were found to be significant indicators of language development.
Conclusions
Overwhelmingly, the research (Farrant & Zubrick, 2013; Huebner, 2000; Karrass et al, 2005; Rodriguez et al, 2009) agreed that there is great benefit to reading to children. Parent-child reading has been found to further language development, specifically, expressive language, which demonstrated that children who were read to developed more extensive vocabularies (Huebner, 2000; Karrass et al, 2005). Due to more sophisticated expressive language development and vocabulary skills, 5 year old children from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children were also more likely to be school-ready than their peers (Farrant & Zubrick, 2013). While research indicates that reading to infants does not have a direct impact on their future language skills, parent-child reading in infancy has been linked to higher levels of joint attention, which predicted future language skills (Karrass et al., 2005; Farrant & Zubrick, 2013). Karass and colleagues (2005) highlighted that children who were read to in infancy were more likely to be read to at later ages, when parent-child reading would be the most impactful. Furthermore, parent-child reading offers children valuable engagement with their parents, which has been shown to greatly benefit children’s language development (Huebner, 2000; Rodriguez et al, 2009). With these findings in mind, there is no reason not to read to one’s infant.
References
Farrant, B. M., & Zubrick, S. R. (2013). Parent–child book reading across early childhood and child vocabulary in the early school years: Findings from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. First Language, 33(3), 280-293.
Huebner, C. E. (2000). Promoting toddlers' language development through community-based intervention. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 21(5), 513-535.
Karrass, J., & Braungart-Rieker, J. M. (2005). Effects of shared parent–infant book reading on early language acquisition. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 26(2), 133- 148.
Rodriguez, E. T., Tamis-LeMonda, C. S., Spellmann, M. E., Pan, B. A., Raikes, H., Lugo-Gil, J., & Luze, G. (2009). The formative role of home literacy experiences across the first three years of life in children from low-income families. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 30(6), 677-694.