Early language development predicts later reading competence, but does reading to young children enhance the language interaction between them and their parents? Automatic assessment of language interaction now yields Adult Word Counts (AWC), Conversational Turn counts (CT) and Child Vocalization counts (CV). This study had 98 families return reading activity logs for a day coinciding with automatic language analysis, and of these 36 reported reading with their children aged 26-61 months on that day. Reading periods yielded much higher AWC and CT than non-reading periods, indicating a greater degree of parent-child language engagement and interaction during reading periods. Such differences were not evident in CV.AWC and CT were high during reading for both high and low education level mothers. Gender effects during reading were evident for AWC (but not CT or CV), indicating greater AWC with male children. These results have important implications for practical action by parents.
wordsKeywords reading, language, interaction, mother, young children, effect, LENAThe impact of book reading in the early years on parent-child language interaction While it is well established that early language development predicts later reading ability, the converse argument (that reading can enhance language development) is less well researched. Accordingly, this study examines evidence for a component of such an argument -that parents' reading to and with their young children enhances the degree of language interaction between them relative to other times (which may in turn yield greater child language competence).Specifically, we examine the quantity of language interaction between parent and child in terms of Adult Word Count (AWC -number of words spoken by the adult), Conversational Turns (CT -number of mutually attentive interactions between child and parent), and Child Vocalization (CV -number of utterances by the child excluding noises) to determine whether these metrics are elevated when books are being read compared to other times. While previous studies used parental self-report of reading practices and/or standardized tests of language and early literacy, the present study used real-time recordings of parent-child language interactions and is the first of its kind.The quantity and quality of early language interaction have been found to have effects on subsequent child progress in school (Hart & Risley, 1995). Establishing that time spent reading in the early years improves early language interaction has important implications for practical action by parents. In this study, albeit with a small sample, language interaction between parents (particularly mothers) and young children (2-5 years) in the home was compared during book reading versus other times. Based on existing literature, our research hypothesis was that language interaction would be higher during book reading than during non-reading periods on the same day (irrespective of which parent interacted with the child). The study also examined LANGUAGE INTE...