Method Helps Children Develop Language From Picture Books

Just an hour of training in how to read picture books to children can help parents develop their children’s language skills, a new study suggests.

Language development in children of trained parents ran an average of six months or more ahead of other children, researchers reported in the July issue of Developmental Psychology. Relatively simple changes “could have substantial positive effects on children’s language development,” wrote G. J. Whitehurst and colleagues at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

For the study, 29 children aged 21 to 35 months from middle-class families in suburban Long Island were divided randomly into an experimental group and a control group.

Parents of children in the experimental group participated in two half-hour training sessions. They were taught to encourage the child to speak more often by using open-ended questions, such as “What is happening in this picture?” to repeat, expand and recast the child’s speech more, and to praise and correct the child’s speech. They were also told to cut down on straight reading and questions that could be answered simply by pointing.

Parents in the control group received no training.

Parents in both groups read to their children the same amount during the month of the experiment.

At the end of the month, children in the experimental group scored some 8 1/2 months ahead of the other children on a standard test involving talking about objects. They scored six months ahead on a test that involved naming objects.

Nine months later they retained a six-month advantage in both tests.