You Read to Me, I’ll Read to You: Relations Between Early Parent-Child Book-Reading Interactions and Later Child Vocabulary and Reading Outcomes

• In Event: Roundtable Session 50
  In Roundtable Session: Research in Reading and Literacy SIG Roundtable 2: Reading and Writing

Abstract

Despite the commonly held belief about the important of shared parent-child book-reading interactions for later language and reading outcomes, empirical evidence supporting the link is weak. In the current study, naturalistic book-reading interactions of 51 parent-child dyads when children were 1, 2 and 3 years-old were examined. The relations between the frequency and nature of the parent input during book-reading interactions, and relations to later child vocabulary at kindergarten and reading at 1st grade were analyzed. Parent book utterances were divided into 3 categories: describing-the-picture, reading-the-text, and extending-the-topic. Results suggest that although infrequent, the frequency of book utterances relate to vocabulary and reading outcomes. In addition, specific relations exist between different aspects of the book-reading interaction and later child outcomes.

Authors

• Ozlem Ece Demir, University of Chicago

• Lauren Applebaum, University of Chicago

• Susan C. Levine, University of Chicago

• Susan Goldin-Meadow, University of Chicago