Preferred Name
Tiffany Pempek Rahl
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Date of Graduation
8-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Psychology (PsyD)
Department
Department of Graduate Psychology
Advisor(s)
Elena Savina
Trevor Stokes
Anne Stewart
Sara Whipple
Abstract
Developmental research confirms the importance of early parental language input for building children’s vocabulary and language skills (Hart & Risley, 1995). While reading with a caregiver is a common way for language input to occur, the approaches parents utilize often fail to capitalize on techniques for improving language and pre-literacy skills (Huebner & Meltzoff, 2005). The purpose of this study was to assess the effectiveness of embedding tips for scaffolding parent reading strategies into a children’s book. Thirty-eight parent-child dyads participated in a 2-week intervention. Families were randomly assigned to receive either a book with embedded tips (experimental condition) or a version of the book with tips removed (control condition) and were asked to read each day for 2 weeks. Afterwards, parents and children participated in a laboratory session in which they read their assigned book and a novel book. Survey data indicated that parents held positive attitudes about reading to children prior to participating in this study. Data from laboratory sessions revealed that parents in the experimental condition read for significantly longer on average than those in the control condition. For the familiar book, parents in the experimental condition were marginally more likely to connect the story to their child’s life and engage their child in the reading process. These results indicate that incorporating evidence-based information for parents into the common activity of reading to children may hold promise. Approaches such as this one provide an opportunity to share information with caregivers in a way that is sensitive to the current societal pressures they face.
Recommended Citation
Pempek Rahl, Tiffany, "Facilitating parental scaffolding of joint book reading with toddlers" (2024). Dissertations, 2020-current. 162.
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/diss202029/162
