Child cognitive development through early childhood reading
Specific purpose statement:
To persuade and raise awareness in reading to your children as a parent or guardian and
the effects on child psychology and development through reading during childhood growth
I. Attention
a. Attention getter:
II. B. Motivation to listen and relate to the audience
a. According to Reuters "Shared reading supports child cognitive development, but
probably more importantly, helps children develop the ability to pay attention
and cooperate," Kistin said by email. "For these social-emotional skills, the
shared experience - sitting close together, pointing out pictures, making
connections between the book and daily life - are critical."
A reading program designed to help men become better fathers is associated with
better parenting skills as well as behavior and learning improvements in kids, a small study has
found.
Researchers focused on Head Start centers in New York City, where programs are
designed to improve school readiness for children younger than 5.
Researchers randomly assigned 126 families to either participate in a reading-based
parenting program with eight weekly sessions or join a control group of people on a waiting list
for the program.
Fathers in the parenting program watched videos showing dads reading with children
and making exaggerated errors. The men discussed better approaches and were encouraged to
practice these strategies when reading at home with their own sons and daughters.
Among other things, the program tried to improve such parenting skills as establishing
consistent routines and spending time with children doing things chosen by the young people.
The program also encouraged dads to use praise and rewards to promote good behavior and to
use distraction or reduced attention to discourage negative behavior.
Children with fathers in the program had significantly bigger improvements in behavior
and language development during the study period than the other children, researchers report
in the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.
Fathers in the program also reported improved discipline approaches and promotion of
their children's psychological growth by the end of the study.
When researchers observed how dads' interactions changed after the program, they
found that fathers made fewer critical statements to their children and used more positive
parenting behaviors such as praise and affection.
In addition to its small size, one limitation of the study was the lack of follow-up data to
see whether the program had a lasting effect, the authors note. The reading approach used in
the program may work well with preschoolers but not with older kids, said Anil Chacko, a
psychology researcher at New York University and the study's lead author.
Still, the study suggests that approaches previously tested to help mothers improve
parenting can also help fathers, said Caroline Kistin, a pediatrics researcher at Boston University
who wasn't involved in the study.
b. According to Susan Braid and the Neonatal Network; A large body of research
has shown that shared book reading is an important activity that can help
parents to promote cognitive and language development, literacy, and reading
achievement in their children,7-9 but most of this research does not
differentiate between children born at term and those born preterm. The
purpose of this study was to investigate the independent effects of shared book
reading on the cognitive development of a sample of children born preterm, or
those infants born before 37 completed weeks of gestation, and to assess what
factors influence the likelihood that parents of children born preterm will read
aloud to their children. This secondary analysis used data from the Early
Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a large, nationally
representative survey of children born in the United States in 2001, to examine
whether shared book reading holds any potential as an early developmental
intervention for children born preterm.
BACKGROUND
Preterm infant care was significantly affected by technology, pharmacology, and
standardization during the 1980s and 1990s, resulting in dramatic improvements in the survival
of preterm infants. Advances in neonatal care such as surfactant therapy, high-frequency
ventilation, and prenatal steroids have dramatically reduced mortality but not preterm birth.1012 Because more preterm infants survive at decreasing gestational age, there has been an
increasing focus on their health and other long-term outcomes, specifically their cognitive
development. The evidence indicates that children born preterm are at an increased risk for
major neurodevelopmental disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, visual and hearing impairment,
and other neurosensory impairments, as well as the more subtle disorders of central nervous
system function, such as language disorders, learning disabilities, and cognitive impairment as
measured by cognitive and language scores according to the Bayley Scales of Infant
Development and other composite measures of neurodevelopmental functioning.1,3'13-15
Given the long-term impact of these disabilities, there is consensus that better interventions
that support the neuro development of children born preterm are needed while infants are in
the NICU and following hospital discharge.1,16
Shared book reading is a general practice that typically involves an adult reading a book to a
child or group of children without requiring extensive interactions from them.17 This practice,
also referred to as "reading to children" or "reading aloud to children," aims at enhancing
children's language and literacy skills and their appreciation of books. Much research in the
general population of children, which is for the most part undifferentiated by gestational age at
birth, indicates that reading to children aged two to five years, including children from lowincome families and children from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds, promotes oral language
development, literacy, reading achievement, and cognitive development.8,9,18,19 The
development of language and other emergent literacy skills in turn helps children get ready for
school and leads to later success in reading.20
The evidence also suggests that early literacy activities such as shared book reading should
begin as early as possible in a child's life. Shared book reading with infants younger than 12
months of age and toddlers aged 12-24 months is associated with higher scores on later
language measures, better language comprehension, and improved cognitive development.
18,20,21 Several decades of research in the general population also indicate that children begin
the process of learning how to read long before they enter any type of formal schooling.
Reading aloud to infants and toddlers before they even know the names of the letters or
understand how to progress from the front to the back of a book helps them to develop
emergent literacy skills that prepare them to learn how to read later in their lives.22
Very little has been written about shared book reading with children born preterm. A
review of the literature reveals only three relevant articles; all concern reading to infants born
preterm while in the NICU. Jones and Englestad describe a pilot program in which parents were
encouraged to read to their preterm infants in the NICU, and, as a result, more parents and
siblings were seen reading to infants.23 Lariviere and Renneck conclude that a parent book
reading intervention had a positive effect on parent-infant interaction and was the only
significant predictor of parent-infant reading three months post-NICU hospitalization.24 In a
recent review, Walker discusses the potential of shared book reading as an intervention to
support the parents of infants in the NICU and to facilitate positive interactions between
parents and infants.25 None of these studies attempts to measure the impact of shared book
reading on the cognitive development of these infants while they are in the NICU or post-NICU
discharge.
Previous research has indicated that race/ethnicity, maternal education, and primary
language of the mother impact the likelihood of reading aloud to children, but these factors
have not been specifically investigated in children born preterm.18,26,27 Both race/ethnicity
and maternal education are independently associated with frequency of shared book reading.
Non-Hispanic black and Hispanic parents are less likely than non-Hispanic white parents to read
to their children. Several studies have identified this association even after controlling for
variables such as family income.18,26-28 Maternal educational level has also been found to
affect the frequency of mother-child shared reading.27,29 For example, Raikes and
colleagues18 found that each additional year of education a mother had attained increased the
likelihood of reading to her child. Primary language also influences parental reading to a
child.18,27,30 A national U.S. survey found non-English-speaking mothers read to their children
less often than mothers whose primary language is English.30
The primary aim of this study was to investigate the independent effects of shared book
reading on the cognitive development of a sample of children born preterm, or those infants
born before 37 completed weeks of gestation, using data from the ECLS-B, a large, nationally
representative survey of children born in the United States in 2001. The secondary aim was to
assess whether the same factors that influence the likelihood of reading aloud to children born
at term gestation, such as race/ethnicity and maternal education, are also present in this
population.
The potential of shared book reading to affect the cognitive development of children born
preterm should be of interest to health care professionals, who care for these children as
infants, especially nurses in the NICU. Neonatal nurses face the challenge of not only assuring
the infants' survival while they are hospitalized but also optimizing their developmental course
and outcome. Furthermore, NICU nurses play a critical role by serving as a primary source of
information and-as an educator for the parents of infants born preterm.31,32 Therefore, they
are best placed to consider the evidence in favor of shared book reading as part of a
comprehensive approach to developmental care.
c. Study Sample
The ECLS-B, sponsored by the National Center for Education Statistics, is a longitudinal
study that followed approximately 14,000 children from birth through kindergarten entry. It is
designed to provide a comprehensive and reliable data set that would be used to better
understand early childhood development, health care, nutrition, and physical well-being. The
data sources used in the ECLS-B included birth certificates, nine-month and two-year parent
interviews, direct assessment of the child at nine months and two years, and child care
observations at two years. The ECLS-B used cluster complex sampling to get an adequate
sample of children born preterm with sufficient minority group representation so that these
populations could be studied.33
Of the 14,000 births initially sampled, a sample of 9,850 parents completed the parent and
child interviews at the two-year data collection point, yielding a total response rate of 70.4
percent.33 Of those, the families of a total of 1,700 singleton preterm infants (22-36 weeks
gestation) of all birth weights and without congenital anomalies participated in the two-year
follow-up. This study included 1,400 of those children (82.3 percent) for whom the Bayley
Short Form Research Edition (BSF-R), which was used to assess young children's cognitive
and motor development, was completed.
This study was reviewed and approved for exemption by the institutional review board. The
Institute of Education Statistics Data Security Office at the Department of Education
reviewed this manuscript and approved its publication.
III. Satisfaction
a.
b.
c.
IV. Preview of main points
V. Action
A.
B.