Associations between in-the-moment behavior of children, family literacy program use, and Latina mother-child book reading

ABSTRACT

This study examined how in-the-moment behaviour of children and family literacy programme use are associated with the affective quality of mother–child interactions and the content of maternal utterances that occurred during book reading. Ninety-Two Latina mother–child dyads were included. Mothers frequently exhibited warm/positive behaviour and discussed the immediate content of the book. Children were highly engaged and many of them alternated between English and Spanish when discussing the content of the book. Language mixing of children was positively associated with the number of maternal utterances on the immediate content of the book, while negatively associated with that on reading the text. Child’s engagement in book reading was associated with the affective quality of mother–child interactions, but not with the content of maternal utterances. Family literacy programme use, especially parent–child interactive literacy activities service was positively associated with the number of maternal utterances on the content of the book.

KEYWORDS:

• Shared book reading
• Latino
• language mixing
• family literacy

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Youngok Jung is an assistant professor in the College of Health and Human Services at California State University Long Beach where she currently teaches courses and advises students in Child Development and Families. Her research interests include examining the role of high-quality early childhood education in child development, the preparation of child care providers to work with English language learners, and the importance of parenting in Latino children’s development. She received her Ph.D. in Psychological Studies in Education from University of California Los Angeles and M.Ed. from the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia.

ORCID

Youngok Jung http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9533-7287

Notes

1 Some families did not answer questions related to mother’s age, immigration, income, and education.

2 Its coding schemes can be provided by the first author upon request.

3 Its coding schemes and examples can be provided by the first author upon request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Los Angeles Children and Families First Commission (‘First 5 LA), via a subcontract from American Institutes for Research.