How Parents Can Help Babies Learn to Talk With Picture Books.

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Language Development
• Interventions: Behavioral: Book Provision Control; Behavioral: Contingent Reading Intervention

• Registration Number: NCT02780557
• Lead Sponsor: University of Sheffield

Brief 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.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2016-05-19
• Study First Submitted QC: 2016-05-19
• Study First Posted: 2016-05-23
• Study Start: 2016-08-24
• Primary Completion: 2018-01-30
• 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: 156

Inclusion Criteria

Infants must be:

• first born and singletons
• full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely)
• with birth weight over 2.5 kg.

Primary caregivers must:

• work less than 24 hours per week (i.e., be the caregiver the child spends most time with)
• be raising their child as monolingual English speakers.

Exclusion criteria:

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

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Book Provision Control	Book Provision Control	-
Contingent Reading Intervention	Contingent Reading Intervention	-

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Change in infant expressive vocabulary	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months	Parents will complete a standardised assessment of vocabulary, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI).

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Accuracy	15 months	Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). Infants will sit in front of a computer screen with a picture on either side of it (e.g., a bottle and a shoe). We will measure the accuracy with which they look to the correct picture upon hearing a word that describes it.
Change in caregiver reported frequency of reading	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months	Parents will complete a questionnaire about how frequently they read with their child.
Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Reaction Time	15 months	Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). We will measure the time it takes the child to look from a distractor to the target.

Trial Locations

Locations (1)

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