Unique contribution of shared book reading on adult-child language interaction.
Researchers agree that early literacy activities, like book sharing and parent-child play, are important for stimulating language development. We hypothesize that book sharing is most powerful because it elicits more interactive talk in young children than other activities. Parents of 43 infants (9-18 months) made two daylong audio recordings using the LENA system. We compared a typical day, with spontaneous occurring activities, with an instructed day when caregivers were prompted to do book reading and toy play. Book sharing resulted in a combination of more parent talk, child talk, and interactions than other language activities. Research context did not influence outcomes: no differences were found in language use between the spontaneous and the instructed activities. Overall it seems clear that even with infants shared reading is a strong unique stimulator of language use from parent and child.
['Clemens|Lucy F|LF|', 'Kegel|Cornelia A T|CAT|']
D000328:Adult D001877:Books D002648:Child D002663:Child Language D002675:Child, Preschool D006801:Humans D007223:Infant D007802:Language D007804:Language Development D010287:Parent-Child Relations D011932:Reading
adult-child language interaction book sharing parent-child play language development infants LENA research context language input natural language environment quality time