Shared reading: Interaction between parents and children in a natural setting

The present study aimed to describe and analyze how parents naturally carry out shared reading with their children, without specific instructions. Additionally, the effect of a brief intervention to teach parents to use shared reading strategies was evaluated.

Method

Four families with children between the ages of four and five without a diagnosis of any disorder participated. We analyzed home footage captured by parents of shared reading moments, and to analyze the intervention, we measured the number of language stimulus strategies used by the parents as well as measures of the children's language.

Results

The description of the natural situation generated four categories of analysis: organization of the physical space, contact with the book, the way the story is told and the emotional relationship between parents and children. After the brief intervention, improvements were found in all measured variables when compared to pre-intervention data.

Conclusion

The importance of guiding families to use more language stimulation strategies in the context of shared reading is discussed, in order to enrich the child's speaking opportunities.

Keywords:
Child language; Parent-child relations; Reading

Family ID	Child’s age	Child's sex	Mother’s age	Mother’s education	Father’s age	Father’s education	Attending family member
F1	4y8m	Male	32	Middle/High School	-	-	Mother
F2	4y3m	Male	30	Middle/High School	32	Technical education	Father
F3	4y5m	Female	33	Incomplete Middle/High School	-	-	Mother
F4	5y1m	Male	35	Middle/High School	-	-	Mother

Family ID	Environment: What was the physical space like and how did the interaction with the space occur?	Book: When and how does the contact with the book happen?	Affectivity: How is the affective relationship between mothers and children?
F1	The child was sitting in a children's chair with their arms resting on a children's table, and the mother was sitting on the other side, facing the child. On the table there is a book which the mother then holds up to read. The child keeps her hand on her mouth. After reading, the child looks around.	At first, the book is facing the mother, who is reading. The child then gets up from the chair and leans over the book, looking at the pages. The mother turned the book so that it would face both of them during reading. The mother turned the pages. The child looked at the book until the end of the reading. Then the child handled the book, turned the pages, and left it facing towards them.	Child smiles slightly at the beginning of reading and then remains serious.
F2	The child was next to his father on a single bed. There was a cat on the child's lap. The lighting was bright. The father and child pet the cat.	The book was on the father's lap, who shows it to the child. The child looked at the book and at times pointed at the pictures.	The child and the father smiled several times throughout the shared reading and seemed to enjoy the activity.
F3	The daughter was lying on the bed with her back to her mother. There was a blanket over the child and a teddy bear. The mother was sitting on the edge of the bed.	The mother was holding the book throughout the reading and the daughter did not make eye contact with the book.	At the end of the story, the child turns to the mother, who kisses her on the forehead, says "Good night", and pulls the sheet over her daughter. The child smiles.
F4	Son and mother were sitting side by side at a table.	Before the reading began, the son was holding the book in his hand, leafing through it. During the reading, the mother held the book. The son maintained eye contact with the book until the end of the story.	The mother smiled a few times when the son answered her questions.

Family ID	In what way is the story told?
F1	The mother reads the book without interruption. After reading, the son asked a question and the mother answered. The mother asked the child to tell the story "the way Mommy told it". The child began to tell the story, looking at the pictures in the book. The mother would then say "calm down, tell it slowly for mommy". The child told the story again and the mother helped, telling some parts of the story and asking questions, for example "Little Red Riding Hood went to the woods, right? What happened?" In what way is the story told?
F2	The father started reading, looking at his son during the story and excitedly responding to his son's communicative initiations. The father explained the story by relating the pictures, "His name is Apollo, look here, but he thinks he is called 'no'. Because they yell 'no' when he's doing something wrong". At the end of the reading, the father related the content of the story to the cat on the child's lap: "It's a good thing that Nemo doesn't do something wrong (like the dog in the book), otherwise we would yell 'no' to him (like the characters in the book say to the dog)".
F3	The mother read the book and asked questions between the pages, for example "Daughter, where did she put her little baby?". At the end, the mother summarized the story "Did you understand, daughter? Jesus was born and they were very happy, his mother had nowhere to put him and put him in the manger, everyone was happy when Jesus was born".
F4	The mother explained to her son that the filming was part of a research project. The mother did not read the story, she flipped through the book asking her son questions about the pictures. The two told the story, based on the pictures. The mother started the story by asking her son "In the little book, what are you seeing here? (and points to the cover of the book)", the son says, "A chicken that laid an egg", and the mother replied, "An egg, very good", and turned the page and asked again what was in the next picture.

Family ID	RecVT		ExpVT		EVALOF
Family ID	Pre	Post	Pre	Post	Pre	Post
F1	29	30	78	80	61	72
F2	32	32	80	88	53	62
F3	27	31	61	67	49	64
F4	32	33	88	93	48	63

Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Campinas Núcleo de Editoração SBI - Campus II, Av. John Boyd Dunlop, s/n. Prédio de Odontologia, 13060-900 Campinas - São Paulo Brasil, Tel./Fax: +55 19 3343-7223 - Campinas - SP - Brazil
E-mail: psychologicalstudies@puc-campinas.edu.br

Acompanhe os números deste periódico no seu leitor de RSS

[1] Correspondence to:
L. G. C. BALOG. E-mail: <livia.gcb@gmail.com>