JOINT BOOK READING MAKES FOR SUCCESS IN LEARNING TO READ - A METAANALYSIS ON INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF LITERACY

The current review is a quantitative meta-analysis of the available em pirical evidence related to parent-preschooler reading and several out come measures. In selecting the studies to be included in this meta-an alysis, we focused on studies examining the frequency of book reading to preschoolers. The results support the hypothesis that parent-presch ooler reading is related to outcome measures such as language growth, emergent literacy, and reading achievement. The overall effect size of d = .59 indicates that book reading explains about 8% of the variance in the outcome measures. The results support the hypothesis that book reading, in particular affects acquisition of the written language re gister The effect of parent-preschooler reading is not dependent on th e socioeconomic status of the families or on several methodological di fferences between the studies. However, the effect seems to become sma ller as soon as children become conventional readers and are able to r ead on their own.