Increasing the print focus of adult-child shared book reading through observational learning

An instructional strategy for increasing adults' verbal and nonverbal refer ences to print while reading to typically developing 4-year-old children wa s evaluated. Also investigated were the effects of adults' use of reference s to print on children's verbal interactions with print. Using a pretest-po sttest control group design, 24 female graduate students in speech-language pathology or audiology were matched on their amount of previous clinical e xperience with young children and were assigned to an experimental or contr ol group. those in the experimental group viewed a brief video that demonst rated the use of three verbal references (comments, questions, and requests ) and two nonverbal references to print (tracking and pointing to print). R esults indicated that both groups showed few references to print at pretest . However, the experimental group used all five reference types significant ly more often than the control group at posttest. in addition, the proporti on of children's verbal utterances referring to print significantly increas ed for those children reading with adults who had received instruction. Cli nical implications are discussed.