Sharing Books With Children

The promotion of language and communicative development in the early years is extremely important. Children who enter school with good language skills have better educational and economic success. This study is part of a large project across Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield Universities to determine how shared reading promotes child language development, and use this knowledge to make it an effective language boosting tool for children across the whole socio-economic spectrum. The overall project includes:

• observational studies to identify what language boosting behaviours are responsible for shared reading's effectiveness, and how parents from different socio-economic groups use these behaviours during shared reading;
• intervention studies to evaluate packages designed to train parents in the use of specific language boosting behaviours during reading;
• a qualitative exploration of the reasons people may not read with their children. This study will provide training to parents on how to develop their children's attention to the features of words while reading books with them. The research questions are: i) Is specific training focused on the sound properties of words during shared reading more effective at developing children's phonological awareness and language than general advice on the importance of reading with children? ii) Do children with speech sound disorder and typically developing children respond differently to intervention? iii) To what extent are differences in training implementation and effects explained by socio-economic status? Our participants will be parents and their children, aged 30-54 months, with a diagnosis of speech sound disorder. They will be recruited via speech and language therapy services in the North West. Data collection will be carried out by the research team in participants' homes, taking 3-4 hours in total over 2-3 appointments. The sessions will be audio-recorded; parents will complete questionnaires, and children's language and speech will be assessed with standardised and in-house tests.