Evaluation of Narrative Skills of Children and Language Inputs of Parents During Shared Book Reading. A Parent-Mediated Home-Based Intervention Study

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Publication year

2022

study description

RCT

core topic(s)

Shared Reading

Exposures, Outcomes, Other

Implementation and Evaluation , Language and Literacy Development , Parent Behaviors and Skills , Parent-Child Relationships/Interactions , Programs and Interventions (other)

objectives

The present study focuses on providing Shared book reading (SBR) training to parents and assesses parents’ interactive storybook reading and changes in the child’s narrative development at baseline, postintervention, and follow-up.

exposure

Shared Book Reading (SBR) training

outcomes evaluated

Parent shared book reading behaviors and child narrative development

setting

Parents of children between 4 and 6 years of age studying in selected schools across Tamil Nadu, India were recruited via email request.

methods

A total of 210 parents and typically developing child dyads participated in this study, 105 in experimental and control groups. The children from the experimental group participated in one-on-one book reading interactions with their parents after receiving training. Parents in the control group were not trained to read with their children. One week after the training sessions and 2 months later, children and parents were tested to determine whether the training led to beneficial effects.

sample size

n=210 (parent-child dyads, total); n=105 (parent-child dyads, experimental); n=105 (parent-child dyads, control)

measures

Measure of Child Narrative Abilities: Edmonton Narrative Norms Instrument (ENNI) scores, a tool used to collect and analyze language information of children during storytelling, including both microstructure (focus on relationships among parts of stories) and macrostructure (focus on the overall content and organization of stories).

results

The data were analyzed by x ² test, Kruskal Wallis 1-way ANOVA on ranks with Student Newman Keuls multiple comparison test (post-hoc test), and 3-way ANOVA with a post-hoc multiple comparison test. During 2 postintervention sessions, parents and children assigned to the intervention group significantly increased the targeted interactive shared reading skills. This result indicates that the intervention successfully changed parent SBR behaviors ( P < .001), resulting in improved child’s narrative skills (P< .001).

conclusions

The current findings can aid in the creation of intervention programs to support parents’ SBR skills and promote children’s overall development.

limitations

The study included only the middle-class population and not the lower class. Some families with a reduced capacity to engage with the SBR intervention due to social and economic challenges may benefit from additional encouragement to enable them to attend.