The quality of parent-child interaction with children with language impairment (LI) during shared book-reading--a context extensively documented as highly facilitative of language acquisition--has been found to be poorer than with typically developing children [1]. Training parents of children with LI to use interactive book-reading strategies has shown contrasting results (e.g.,[2] vs.[3]). This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention addressed to parents of preschoolers with SLI, aimed to (a) making parents aware of their role in promoting language acquisition, (b) training parents to use shared reading strategies facilitating the child’s verbal participation, and then (c) increasing conversational participation and, possibly, oral language skills in their children. Twenty families with children with SLI (aged 3;5-5;6) were engaged in a 10-week-intervention including individual and small group sessions of parent training, and implementation of shared book-reading at home (4 sessions weekly). Ten families participating in the research project, but not in the intervention, acted as control group. Mother-child book-reading were videotaped before, during, and after the intervention, and were coded to yield measures of maternal and child communicative functions and modalities, mothers’ use of shared reading strategies, and children’s active participation and linguistic production. Results show that in the intervention group the durations of book-reading sessions and the mothers’ use of some of the strategies learned --sharing control of the book with the child, offering utterances contingent to the child’s focus, referring to familiar experiences, expanding the child’s utterances-- increased significantly. These changes were associated with an increase in children’s conversational participation, indexed by a significant increase of child initiations and linguistic production. However, no intervention effects were found in child lexical and morphosyntactic complexity. No significant changes were found for the control group. These findings suggest the effectiveness of combining speech-language therapy for children with interventions addressed to parents.
Improving the quality of parent-child shared book reading: An intervention program addressed to parents of preschoolers with specific language impairment
LAVELLI, Manuela;BARACHETTI, Chiara;Florit E.;
2014-01-01
Abstract
The quality of parent-child interaction with children with language impairment (LI) during shared book-reading--a context extensively documented as highly facilitative of language acquisition--has been found to be poorer than with typically developing children [1]. Training parents of children with LI to use interactive book-reading strategies has shown contrasting results (e.g.,[2] vs.[3]). This study examined the effectiveness of an intervention addressed to parents of preschoolers with SLI, aimed to (a) making parents aware of their role in promoting language acquisition, (b) training parents to use shared reading strategies facilitating the child’s verbal participation, and then (c) increasing conversational participation and, possibly, oral language skills in their children. Twenty families with children with SLI (aged 3;5-5;6) were engaged in a 10-week-intervention including individual and small group sessions of parent training, and implementation of shared book-reading at home (4 sessions weekly). Ten families participating in the research project, but not in the intervention, acted as control group. Mother-child book-reading were videotaped before, during, and after the intervention, and were coded to yield measures of maternal and child communicative functions and modalities, mothers’ use of shared reading strategies, and children’s active participation and linguistic production. Results show that in the intervention group the durations of book-reading sessions and the mothers’ use of some of the strategies learned --sharing control of the book with the child, offering utterances contingent to the child’s focus, referring to familiar experiences, expanding the child’s utterances-- increased significantly. These changes were associated with an increase in children’s conversational participation, indexed by a significant increase of child initiations and linguistic production. However, no intervention effects were found in child lexical and morphosyntactic complexity. No significant changes were found for the control group. These findings suggest the effectiveness of combining speech-language therapy for children with interventions addressed to parents.
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