Relations Among the Frequency of Shared Reading and 4-Year-Old Children's Vocabulary, Morphological and Syntax Comprehension, and Narrative Skills

Abstract

Books can be a rich source of learning for children and adults alike. In the present study, the contribution of shared reading and parent literacy to a variety of child outcomes was tested. Child outcomes included measures of expressive vocabulary, morphological and syntax comprehension, and narrative ability (story grammar, cohesion, and language complexity) for book stories as well as personal stories. A total of 106 English-speaking 4-year-old children and their parents participated. As predicted, shared reading accounted for unique variance in children's expressive vocabulary and morphological knowledge after controlling for child nonverbal intelligence, parent education, and parent literacy (i.e., book exposure). Although shared reading predicted syntax comprehension, the effect was mediated by parents' own level of literacy. Contrary to expectation, shared reading was not correlated with any of the narrative measures. Interestingly, the narrative measures for telling stories from a book and telling a personal story were not related to each other and were differentially related to the other child measures, suggesting that book and personal stories may represent different genres requiring different skills.

Notes

^a8-point scale: 0 (never), 1 (one time per week) … 7 (seven times per week).

^b9-point scale: 0 (never), 1 (one time per week) … 8 (more than seven times per week).

^c5-point scale: 0 (never), 1 (rarely), 2 (sometimes), 3 (often), 4 (very often).

^dReported are mean percentages of correct titles selected.

^eStandard scores with means of 100 for the vocabulary measure and 10 for the others.

*p =.05.

**p = .01.

*p = .05.

**p = .01.