Parents reading with their 10-month-old babies: key predictors for high-quality reading styles

ABSTRACT

Sixty-five parent–infant dyads were observed reading an unfamiliar book at home. Parents’ use of language-stimulating and emotionally rich reading styles was measured via a specially developed Book Sharing Scale for Infants. Aspects of child temperament were assessed by the Infant Characteristics Questionnaire [Bates, J. E., Freeland, C. A. B., & Lounsbury, M. L. (1979). Measurement of infant difficultness. Child Development, 50(3), 794–803], and parents responsivity was measured by the Caregiver Interaction Scale [Arnett, J. (1989). Caregiver interaction scale. Princeton, NJ: Educational Testing Service]. Parents’ socio-economic status and education, parents’ impression of their child being unsociable and the warmth of the caregiver’s interaction were positively predictive of the quality of the reading interaction. This suggests that the extent to which parents employ high-quality reading styles with their 10-month-old babies, depends on socio-demographic variables, children’s ability to communicate with their parents, and the overall affective quality of their relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Shared book reading
• infant characteristics
• parents’ reading styles
• parent–child interaction

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of families and the Families, Children and Child Care project team, which includes Lars-Erik Malmberg, Jacqueline Barnes, Penelope Leach, and Alan Stein. We are indebted to the Tedworth Charitable Trust and the Glass-House Trust for generously funding the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Natalia Kucirkova is a senior lecturer in Early Years and Childhood Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research concerns innovative ways of supporting shared book reading, digital literacy and the role of personalisation in early years. Her publications appeared in First Language, Computers & Education, Cambridge Journal of Education, Communication Disorders Quarterly or Learning, Media & Technology.

Professor Kathy Sylva is the author of the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale - Curricular Extension (ECERS-E). She is Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Oxford, Department of Education, and has conducted large-scale studies on the effects of early childhood education and care on children’s development.

Philip S. Dale is a Professor Emeritus of Speech & Hearing Sciences at the University of New Mexico, and Visiting Professor at Kings College London. He is a co-developer of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. He has conducted research on the assessment, genetic and environment causes, and consequences of individual differences in early language development, with a special interest in late talkers.

Notes

1 The study adapted the socio-economic class coding from the FCCC study. In the FCCC, the Computer Assisted Standard Occupational Coding (CASOC) was used to assign each participant to an occupation category. Mothers’ and fathers’ socioeconomic class distribution was measured on a 3-point scale and coded as 1 – working; 2 – intermediate; and 3 – managerial and professional.