The Effects of a Reading Frequency Intervention for Parents and Pre-K Children on Interaction Quality

• In Event: 1-079 - Adult-Child Interactions in Early Childhood Education and Child Outcomes

Integrative Statement

Parent-child reading interventions have a long history within the preschool context, particularly for low-income families (Scarborough & Dobrich, 1994; Reese, Sparks, & Leyva, 2010). Many preschool programs encourage parents to spend more time reading with their children and provide books for families to borrow. Although we know that language exposure is essential for children’s development, the affective and parent-child relationship component of book-reading is also critical for children’s enjoyment and engagement in the activity (Bus & van IJzendoorn, 1994). In this paper we investigate the relationship between the time parents spend reading to their children as the result of a Head Start-based intervention and the affective relationship quality present in the interaction. As a result of spending more time practicing reading, do parent-child dyads demonstrate higher quality relationship behaviors?

The Parents and Children Together (PACT; Mayer, Kalil, Oreopoulos, & Gallegos, 2018) intervention leveraged behavioral tools such as goal-setting and text message reminders to increase the amount of time low-income parents spent reading to their pre-K children. Participating families with children enrolled in subsidized preschool programs borrowed an electronic tablet with a digital application containing a library of 500 books. This application audio- and video-recorded the reading sessions with the parents’ consent. Overall, the treatment group increased usage of the reading application by one standard deviation after the six-week intervention.

The videos from the sixth and final week of book-reading on the electronic tablet were retained, providing a sample of 1100 videos across 147 participants. Four independent raters coded (at 70% reliability) and analyzed parent-child reading behaviors. Environmental coding of these videos suggest that this method of recording interactions via a digital application allowed for a more naturalistic study of at-home reading behaviors than collected by previous observational studies. We evaluated relationship quality by adapting the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS; Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008) and the Three Bag Assessment (NCCF, 1999). The outcomes of interest were matched affect, parent positive, positive interaction, parent positive regard, parent responsiveness, parent re-engagement, and parent scaffolding.

To test our question we regressed each dependent variable on treatment status, and controlled for parent education, parent primary language, parent age, and the number of children in the household under the age of 5. Evidence on this preliminary sample of 366 videos (53 dyads) suggests that parents in the PACT treatment (i.e., who spent more time reading) had significantly higher matched affect (β = .41, p < .05), parent positive affect (β = .32, p < .05), positive interaction (β = .34, p < .05), parent positive regard (β = .34, p < .05), parent responsiveness (β = .44, p < .05), and parent re-engagement (β = .42, p < .05) than control group parents. These findings have implications for the unintended consequences of interventions that focus on time spent reading, without explicitly training parents on reading methods. Future directions to be discussed at the time of presentation include moderation by parent primary language and exploration of parent mental health and attitudes around childrearing.

Authors

• Jill Gandhi, New York University
  Presenting Author

• William Schneider, Northwestern University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Susan Mayer, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author

• Ariel Kalil, University of Chicago
  Non-Presenting Author