Poster #151 - Tell Me a Story! Printed Text Shapes Parents’ Picture-Book Reading Style With Preverbal Infants

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Book sharing is popular among parents with young children, but parents’ reading styles may differ widely. Some parents may assume the role of a storyteller, whereas others engage children in co-storytelling or use books as conversational tools. Past research suggests that parents who engage in discourse that contain open-ended questions paired with elaborative answers help further children’s social capabilities (Peterson & Slaughter, 2003). Compared to toddlers, preverbal infants may be exposed to different parental discourse because of their young age and different characteristics of the books. Textless picture books may broaden opportunities for questions and allow parents to be more elaborative (Senechal, Cornell, & Broda, 1995), but texts referencing mental states may help parents provide a richer dialogue about human behavior and contribute to children’s social understanding (Ziv, Smadja, & Aram, 2014). The features of picture books thus warrant further consideration and comparison.

The current study examined parents’ verbal behaviors during picture-book sharing with their 9-month-old infants when the pictures were shown with emotion terms (emotion text condition; n=15), no words (no text condition; n=16), or color names (neutral text; n=16). Across the conditions, the pictures were identical except for the terms provided. All parents were asked to “look over these pictures with [child’s name]” for three minutes. Parent utterances related to the picture book were coded by function: attention-recruiting, elaboration, question, or feedback (Black, Macdonald, Bayrami, Agosta, & Milian, 2006). Moreover, mentalistic utterances were coded by the type of mental states labeled (cognition, emotion, desire, intention) and mental insight offered (false belief, mental causality, point of view; Ziv, Smadja, & Aram, 2013).

Results (Figure 1) indicated that parents’ reactions differed by condition. Parents presented with emotion text tended to exhibit a storytelling style, producing significantly fewer attention-recruiting utterances and fewer questions than those without text or with neutral text, ps<.025. In contrast, parents with neutral text tended to exhibit a conversational style, making more attempts to recruit infants’ attention, ask questions, and give feedback (relative to those with emotion text, ps<.041). Finally, parents with no text tended to exhibit a “disjointed” style, making attempts to recruit attention and ask questions (relative to those with emotion text, ps<.021), but did not give substantial feedback. As expected, parents in the emotion text condition provided significantly more emotion-related utterances relative to the other conditions (ps<.001). Utterances about other types of mental states and about mental causality rarely occurred (Ms<1), and those about other insights (false belief, point of view) never occurred; no significant differences were found regarding these variables.

Our findings suggest that emotion texts are related to parental storytelling during book sharing. Although parents did not extend their mental-state discourse beyond the referred emotions, the texts impacted parents’ reading style in the book-sharing context. Future research could examine the types of questions parents pose to preverbal infants, the function and motivation behind these questions, and whether specific types of questions and reading styles differentially predict children’s social competence in the later years.

Authors

• Malina Her, San Jose State University
  Presenting Author

• Shinchieh Duh, San Jose State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Su-hua Wang, University of California Santa Cruz
  Non-Presenting Author