Supporting Children's School Readiness.

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Language Development

• Registration Number: NCT02854462
• Lead Sponsor: University of Sheffield

Brief Summary

The aim of this project is to test whether training parents to ask their children 'inference- eliciting' questions during book reading is effective in promoting story comprehension for 4-year-olds from a range of socio-economic backgrounds.

Detailed Description

Language comprehension relies on the ability to make local and global inferences (e.g., inferring what a pronoun refers to, or inferring why a protagonist in a story did something based on information distributed through the text). These skills develop in the preschool years and are demonstrated when children make sense of stories that are read to them. While important for later reading ability and academic success, relatively little is known about whether anything can be done to improve inference-making skills in the preschool years. One possibility is that parent-child book reading would help. During book reading, some parents naturally ask their children questions about the story that would require them to make inferences about the text. The current study is designed to test whether doing this promotes children's ability to make inferences. Half the parents in this study will be given books with inference eliciting questions added to them and will be provided with training about how to ask these questions and respond to their children's answers. The other half of the parents will be given a maths exercise book and asked to spend the same amount of time per day working through this.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2016-07-27
• Study First Submitted QC: 2016-08-02
• Study First Posted: 2016-08-03
• Study Start: 2016-08-10
• Primary Completion: 2018-03-20
• Study Completion: 2018-03-22
• Status Verified: 2018-05
• Last Update Submitted: 2018-05-01
• Last Update Posted: 2018-05-04

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: COMPLETED
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 100

Inclusion Criteria

Children are:

First born Full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely) With birth weight over 2.5 kg Being raised as monolingual English speakers

Exclusion Criteria

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

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Change after 4 weeks in children's ability to answer inference questions.	Baseline: when child is 4 years 3 months. Post test: 4 weeks post intervention	An age-appropriate test of inferencing ability has been developed for this study including vignettes developed by the Language and Reading Research Consortium. Children listen to short vignettes and are then asked questions that require them to make local and global inferences based on the information in the stories.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Change in NFER baseline assessment	Baseline: when child is 4 years 3 months - 4 years 6 months. Post test: 4 weeks post intervention	This is an age appropriate test of maths and language ability.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

University of Sheffield; 🇬🇧 Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom