Language Development
Conditions
Keywords
Language Development, Shared Picture Book reading, Preschoolers, Inference making
Brief summary
The aim of this project is to test whether training parents to ask their children 'inference- eliciting' questions during book reading is effective in promoting story comprehension for 4-year-olds from a range of socio-economic backgrounds.
Detailed description
Language comprehension relies on the ability to make local and global inferences (e.g., inferring what a pronoun refers to, or inferring why a protagonist in a story did something based on information distributed through the text). These skills develop in the preschool years and are demonstrated when children make sense of stories that are read to them. While important for later reading ability and academic success, relatively little is known about whether anything can be done to improve inference-making skills in the preschool years. One possibility is that parent-child book reading would help. During book reading, some parents naturally ask their children questions about the story that would require them to make inferences about the text. The current study is designed to test whether doing this promotes children's ability to make inferences. Half the parents in this study will be given books with inference eliciting questions added to them and will be provided with training about how to ask these questions and respond to their children's answers. The other half of the parents will be given a maths exercise book and asked to spend the same amount of time per day working through this.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALLanguage comprehension intervention
BEHAVIORALCounting intervention
Sponsors
University of Leeds
University of Sheffield
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
BASIC_SCIENCE
Masking
TRIPLE (Subject, Caregiver, Investigator)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
50 Months to 56 Months
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Children are: First born Full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely) With birth weight over 2.5 kg Being raised as monolingual English speakers
Exclusion criteria
Neither caregivers nor infants have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability.
Design outcomes
Primary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change after 4 weeks in children's ability to answer inference questions. | Baseline: when child is 4 years 3 months. Post test: 4 weeks post intervention | An age-appropriate test of inferencing ability has been developed for this study including vignettes developed by the Language and Reading Research Consortium. Children listen to short vignettes and are then asked questions that require them to make local and global inferences based on the information in the stories. |
Secondary
| Measure | Time frame | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Change in NFER baseline assessment | Baseline: when child is 4 years 3 months - 4 years 6 months. Post test: 4 weeks post intervention | This is an age appropriate test of maths and language ability. |
Countries
United Kingdom
Outcome results
None listed