Ps. Dale et al., PARENT-CHILD BOOK READING AS AN INTERVENTION TECHNIQUE FOR YOUNG-CHILDREN WITH LANGUAGE DELAYS, Topics in early childhood special education, 16(2), 1996, pp. 213-235
The effect of instructing parents of children with language delays in
effective joint book-reading techniques was compared with language fac
ilitation through more general conversational instruction. Thirty-thre
e children, 3 to 6 years of age, and their mothers participated. Paren
ts receiving a version of Whitehurst's Dialogic Reading Training Progr
am (Whitehurst et al., 1988) increased their use of what/who questions
, open-ended questions, imitation, and expansions more than did parent
s receiving conversational language training. More modest effects were
also found for the children, primarily in an increased rate of verbal
responses to questions, increased number of different words, and incr
eased Mean Length of Utterance. Parents whose behavior changed followi
ng the instruction were more likely to have had children whose languag
e changed, a finding suggesting that the program affects children's de
velopment. In addition, correlations between children's pretest level
and their change as a result of the treatment suggested that children
learn different things from joint book reading at different points in
development. On the whole, the results of this investigation of book-r
eading training suggest that it has considerable potential for facilit
ating language development with children with language delays, but tha
t stronger interventions, monitored over a longer period of time, are
needed.