How Parents Can Help Babies Learn to Talk With Picture Books.

A Randomised Control Trial to Test the Effect of Parent Contingent Talk During Shared Book Reading on Infant Language Learning.

The aim of this project is to test whether giving parents advice about book reading is effective in promoting language learning for infants from a range of socio-economic backgrounds.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Language Development
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Contingent Reading Intervention; Behavioral: Book Provision Control

Detailed Description

Children from disadvantaged families tend to have limited language skills compared to their advantaged peers. While many factors contribute to language ability, two aspects of the early caregiving environment are known to be correlated with child language outcomes 1) caregiver-child book reading and 2) caregiver contingent talk. Contingent talk refers to a style of communication whereby the caregiver talks about what is in their infant's current focus of attention. This style of talking can be facilitated when parents read books with their babies. The aim of this research is to establish whether asking parents to engage in contingent talk in the context of book reading promotes vocabulary learning. This study will compare the effects of an intervention to promote contingent talk against a control where parents are given books but not given any training in how to read them in a contingent manner. The study will include children from socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged families.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 156
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United Kingdom
  • South Yorkshire
    • Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom, S10 2TN
      • University of Sheffield

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 11 months to 11 months (Child)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

Infants must be:

• first born and singletons
• full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely)
• with birth weight over 2.5 kg.

Primary caregivers must:

• work less than 24 hours per week (i.e., be the caregiver the child spends most time with)
• be raising their child as monolingual English speakers.

Exclusion criteria:

Neither caregivers nor infants must have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: Quadruple

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Contingent Reading Intervention	Behavioral: Contingent Reading Intervention; Caregivers will be provided with 6 picture books. They will be trained to use contingent talk when looking at picture books with their infants. They will be asked to spend 10 mintues each day engaging in contingent talk while looking at picture books. The intervention will run for 4 months. Parents will be asked to keep a daily reading diary.
Other: Book Provision Control	Behavioral: Book Provision Control; Caregivers will be provided with 6 picture books. They will not be trained to read with their child. They will receive information from other sources (e.g. health visitors and Book Start schemes) as normal.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in infant expressive vocabulary	Parents will complete a standardised assessment of vocabulary, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI).	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in caregiver reported frequency of reading	Parents will complete a questionnaire about how frequently they read with their child.	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months
Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Accuracy	Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). Infants will sit in front of a computer screen with a picture on either side of it (e.g., a bottle and a shoe). We will measure the accuracy with which they look to the correct picture upon hearing a word that describes it.	15 months
Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Reaction Time	Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). We will measure the time it takes the child to look from a distractor to the target.	15 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Change in caregiver contingent talk while book reading	Video recordings of dyads reading books will be analysed for quantity of caregiver contingent talk.	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Sheffield
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Danielle E Matthews, PhD, University of Sheffield

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): August 24, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): January 30, 2018
• Study Completion (Actual): March 22, 2018

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: May 19, 2016
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 19, 2016
• First Posted (Estimate): May 23, 2016

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): May 4, 2018
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: May 1, 2018
• Last Verified: May 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Keywords: Parenting; Vocabulary; Infancy; Book reading
• Other Study ID Numbers: R/139470-11-1-INFANCY

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: YES
• IPD Plan Description: With participants' permission, IPD will be archived in accordance with the guidelines of the University of Sheffield, the UK Data Archive and the ESRC's Research Data Policy.