Reading Together: How to Promote Children's Language Development Using Family-based Shared Book Reading

Caroline Rowland

Status: Completed

Conditions: Language Development

Treatments: Behavioral: Reading Together - Shared Reading Control; Behavioral: Reading Together - Dialogic Reading; Behavioral: Reading Together - Pausing for Reading

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02625584

RETH000849

Details and patient eligibility

About

The aim of this project is to determine how shared reading promotes child language development, and to use this knowledge to make it an effective language-boosting tool for children from all social and economic backgrounds.

Full description

Two interventions will be created which are intended to boost children's vocabulary and grammar abilities, and will be assessed on how they are implemented by caregivers across different socio economic groups, and how they affect children's development of these language skills. Previous research has found dialogic reading interventions to be less effective for children from low socio-economic backgrounds. This project will investigate whether a shared reading intervention, designed to require less of a behaviour change from caregivers than dialogic reading, can be used to effectively boost vocabulary and grammar development in children across the whole socio-economic spectrum.

Enrollment: 150 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 30 to 36 months old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All families will be included unless they fit the exclusion criteria.

Exclusion criteria

• Children born before 37 weeks gestation (premature)
• Children who weighed less than 5lb 9oz at birth (low birth weight)
• Children who have had an ear infection/glue ear for longer than 3 months, 4-6 ear infections within a 6 month period or another identified hearing problem (e.g. at newborn hearing screening)
• Children with an identified developmental disability (e.g. Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Fragile X syndrome, Muscular dystrophy, Di George syndrome, Down's syndrome, Williams syndrome)
• Children with a hearing or visual impairment
• Children who hear another language (not English) for 1 day or more in a typical week (please note that this also excludes children of parents who do not speak English)
• Children whose parents have a learning disability which puts their children at risk of language delay and excludes the parents from giving informed consent on their own and on their children's behalf.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Quadruple Blind

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150 participants in 3 patient groups

Shared Reading Control

Other group

Description:

Reading Together - Shared Reading Control. The intervention will run for six weeks and the caregivers will be provided with books to read with their children. Caregivers will not be trained to read with their child. The caregivers will be asked to read two books to their child five times a week. Caregivers will keep a reading diary and audio record all shared book reading sessions with their child.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Reading Together - Shared Reading Control

Dialogic Reading

Experimental group

Description:

Reading Together - Dialogic Reading. The intervention will run for six weeks and the caregivers will be provided with books to read with their children. Caregivers will be trained to read with their child using a dialogic reading style. The caregivers will be asked to read two books to their child five times a week. Caregivers will keep a reading diary and audio record all shared book reading sessions with their child.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Reading Together - Dialogic Reading

Pausing for Reading

Experimental group

Description:

Reading Together - Pausing for Reading. The intervention will run for six weeks and the caregivers will be provided with books to read with their children. Caregivers will be trained to read with their child using a style which involves pausing, recasting and open questioning. The caregivers will be asked to read two books to their child five times a week. Caregivers will keep a reading diary and audio record all shared book reading sessions with their child.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Reading Together - Pausing for Reading