A Dialogic Reading Ebook Intervention Promotes Opportunities for Parent-Child Mental State Talk

• In Event: The Impact of Socially Interactive Technologies on Parent-Child Interactions and Young Children’s Learning

Abstract

Incorporating dialogic reading methods into an electronic storybook increased parents’ and children’s overall and content-related talk during reading (Strouse et al., 2017; Troseth et al., 2020). Quantity of language exposure has been linked to children’s vocabulary development, but specific content is also important and has been less explored. For instance, parent talk about internal states predicts children’s development of emotion and mental state understanding as well as emotion regulation (Brown & Dunn, 1996; LaBounty et al., 2008; Ruffman et al., 2002).

Shared reading contexts provide an environment where children can talk about internal states, and parents can encourage and guide such talk (Adrian et al., 2005; Garner et al., 2008; Ensor et al., 2014; Ontai & Thompson, 2002). In dialogic reading, parents are encouraged to ask open-ended questions, have the child retell the story, and discuss connections between the story and the child’s life (Whitehurst et al., 1988). Children’s story retellings may provide the opportunity for children to talk about characters’ mental states as they describe how and why story events transpired (Zevenbergen et al., 2003). Other opportunities for mental state talk during dialogic reading include making inferences about storybook characters' thoughts, motives, and feelings and predicting future story events.

We evaluated the impact of a dialogic reading-based ebook on 1) the kinds of questions parents asked and 2) the mental state language parents used. Families (n = 80, children ages 3-5 years) read the dialogic reading ebook, a control ebook, or both (the choice condition) at home for 2 weeks, then read a different ebook during a lab visit. We investigated whether parents’ use of dialogic prompts and mental state talk was higher after exposure to the dialogic than the control version of the ebook.

Parents’ on-topic prompts during reading were coded according to the dialogic reading acronym CROWD (completion, recall, open-ended, wh-, and distancing; Zevenbergen et al., 2003), with a focus on recall, open-ended, and distancing prompts – those we expected to provide the most opportunity for mental state discussion. Parent language was also coded using an adaption of the Mental State Talk Coding System (King & La Paro, 2015; words from our ebook added to their word list).

At post-test, parents in the dialogic and choice conditions used more prompts than parents in the control condition (Table 1; Tukey pairwise comparisons, ps < .001), including significantly more open-ended prompts (dialogic p = .002, choice p < .001). Parents in the choice condition used more distancing prompts than those in the control group (p = .018), with the dialogic group falling between.

Parents in the dialogic group used significantly more emotion, cognition, desire, and perception words A post-test than parents in the control group (Figure 1). Parents in the choice group also used significantly more emotion and perception words than those in the control group.

Dialogic reading training (modeled by an e-book character) may promote not only more parent-child talk, but also more opportunities for mental state talk. Thus, well-designed e-books may promote the types of parent-child conversations that support the development of emotion understanding and regulation.

Authors

• Gabrielle A. Strouse, University of South Dakota
  Presenting Author

• Georgene Troseth, Non

• Zachary Stuckelman, Vanderbilt University

• Jane Lurie, Vanderbilt University