NCT02780557

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.

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 156 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Sheffield · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 11 Months – 11 Months
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

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.

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.

Conditions

• Language Development

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
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.
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.

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-08-24
• Primary completion: 2018-01-30
• Completion: 2018-03-22
• First posted: 2016-05-23
• Last updated: 2018-05-04

Locations

1 site across 1 country: United Kingdom