Infant and Parent Shared Book Reading

Parent-infant Learning Dynamics During Early Shared Book Reading

This work is guided by two specific aims and is expected to result in a better understanding of the effectiveness of shared book reading as a tool for supporting parent-infant interactions and infant learning across the first year of life. This work determined the extent to which books with individually-named characters (e.g., "Boris", "Fiona") increases parent-infant joint attention and infant selective attention relative to books with generic labels (e.g., "Bear", "Bear") or no labels and whether attention differs by age. During infant-parent shared book reading joint attention was measured using dual eye-tracking. Infants and parents then returned to the lab the next day and infant selective attention and infant-parent neural synchrony was measured using EEG.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Individual, Category, and No-label Conditions
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: Effects of shared book reading: Labels

Detailed Description

Shared book reading has been found to have broad developmental benefits for language, socio-emotional and cognitive development. However, the effects of shared book reading on infant development are not well understood. Although healthcare professionals and educators ask parents to read books to their infants early and often, the book reading experience itself has never been systematically investigated in infancy. This work is guided by two specific aims and is expected to result in a better understanding of the effectiveness of shared book reading as a tool for supporting parent-infant interactions and infant learning across the first year of life. The primary aim of the proposed work is to determine the extent to which books with individually-named characters (e.g., "Boris", "Fiona") increases parent-infant joint attention and infant selective attention relative to books with generic labels (e.g., "Bear", "Bear") or no labels and whether attention differs by age. To address the aim of this project, a cross-sectional sample of 6-, 9-, and 12-month old infants and their parents came to the laboratory and read a book that includes three distinct character labeling conditions (individual names, generic category labels, no label). During infant-parent shared book reading joint attention was measured using dual eye-tracking. Infants and parents then returned to the lab the next day and infant selective attention and infant-parent neural synchrony was measured using EEG frequency tagging while infants and their parent viewed familiar characters across labeling conditions as well as unfamiliar characters. This project determined the extent to which parent-infant shared book reading impacted infant attention, parent-infant joint attention, EEG power, and parent-infant EEG synchrony.

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 146
• Phase: Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

Study Locations

• United States
  • Florida
    • Gainesville, Florida, United States, 32611-2250
      • University of Florida Brain, Cognition and Development Laboratory

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 5 months to 65 years (Child, Adult, Older Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• Infants will be included if they are typically developing and between 5.5 and 12.5 months of age, as well as their caregiver.
• Parents 18-65 years old

Exclusion Criteria:

1. Infants who were born more that 14 days premature.
2. Infants who with a history of neurological or visual deficits.
3. Infants with a history of seizures or a disorder that includes risk of seizures.
4. Infants with a parent that has a history of seizures of a disorder that includes risk of seizures.
5. Parents with a history of seizures or a disorder that includes risk of seizures.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Basic Science
• Allocation: Non-Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

4

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: 6 month olds; 6-month old infants and a parent completed shared book reading and infant visual attention, joint visual attention (dyad, co-occurrence of parent and infant attention toward the book), infant EEG power, and infant-parent EEG coherence were measured in for objects labeled with individual level names, category-level names, and no label. All infant-parent dyads completed all three conditions.	Behavioral: Effects of shared book reading: Labels; Book reading included objects labeled with 1) Individual labels, 2) Category labels, and 3) No Labels. Condition and infant age differences were examined.
Active Comparator: 9 month olds; 9-month old infants and a parent completed shared book reading and infant visual attention, joint visual attention (dyad, co-occurrence of parent and infant attention toward the book), infant EEG power, and infant-parent EEG coherence were measured in for objects labeled with individual level names, category-level names, and no label. All infant-parent dyads completed all three conditions.	Behavioral: Effects of shared book reading: Labels; Book reading included objects labeled with 1) Individual labels, 2) Category labels, and 3) No Labels. Condition and infant age differences were examined.
Active Comparator: 12 month olds; 12-month old infants and a parent completed shared book reading and infant visual attention, joint visual attention (dyad, co-occurrence of parent and infant attention toward the book), infant EEG power, and infant-parent EEG coherence were measured in for objects labeled with individual level names, category-level names, and no label. All infant-parent dyads completed all three conditions.	Behavioral: Effects of shared book reading: Labels; Book reading included objects labeled with 1) Individual labels, 2) Category labels, and 3) No Labels. Condition and infant age differences were examined.
Active Comparator: Adult Parents; Adult parents of infant participants completed shared book reading with their infants. Joint attention and EEG synchrony data were recorded and combined with infant data for analyses. No adult data were analyzed separately from infant data.	Behavioral: Effects of shared book reading: Labels; Book reading included objects labeled with 1) Individual labels, 2) Category labels, and 3) No Labels. Condition and infant age differences were examined.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Infant Visual Attention	Infant visual attention was measured for all 3 conditions using head mounted eye-tracking. Duration of visual attention (total duration of infant visual fixations greater than 100 ms each, to the book during shared book reading) was measured within a spatial window of the scene. Proportations of visual attention to the book were calculated by dividing attention duration to the book by the total task duration	Day 1
Infant EEG Steady-state Evoked Potential Frequency Tagging Power	To examine the extent to which infant EEG power, as measured by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was modulated by label condition and age, data were extracted from a mid-occipital cluster of Oz and its 6 nearest neighbors (channels 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83) for each of the conditions by age group.	On Day 2

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
Infant and Parent EEG Synchrony	Infant and parent EEG synchrony (as a dyad) was quantified and compared across conditions. We used a phase-locking index to quantify EEG dyadic synchrony across conditions. The phase-locking index measures the extent to which the parent and infant oscillatory response is in the same phase across time. This index is bounded between 0 and 1, with 1 being perfect synchrony.	On Day 2
Parent-Infant Visual Joint Attention	Parent and infant visual attention (as a dyad) was measured across conditions using dual parent and infant head mounted eye-tracking. Duration of joint attention (periods of overlap of parent and infant visual fixations to the book during shared book reading) was measured within a spatial window of the scene. Proportions of joint attention were calculated by dividing joint attention duration by the total task duration.	On Day 1

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: University of Florida
• Collaborators: Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)
• Investigators: Principal Investigator: Lisa Scott, University of Florida; Principal Investigator: Andreas Keil, PhD, University of Florida

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): February 8, 2022
• Primary Completion (Actual): December 14, 2023
• Study Completion (Actual): December 14, 2023

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: April 2, 2020
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: April 3, 2020
• First Posted (Actual): April 7, 2020

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): March 25, 2025
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: January 14, 2025
• Last Verified: January 1, 2025

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: IRB202000756-N; 1R21HD102715-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract); 5R21HD102715-02 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: UNDECIDED

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No