Sharing Tales That Teach: An RCT of Emotion-Focused Shared Picturebook Reading Versus Standard Dialogic Reading to Support Emotion Regulation and Executive Function in Caregiver-Child Dyads
试验速览
- 阶段
- 不适用
- 状态
- 尚未招募
- 入组人数
- 200
- 试验地点
- 1
研究概览
简要总结
Sharing Tales That Teach is a randomised study of a shared picturebook reading programme for 4- to 5-year-old children and their primary caregivers. The study will test whether a caregiver-delivered, emotion-focused shared reading programme leads to greater improvements in children's emotion regulation than a standard dialogic shared reading programme.
Emotion regulation refers to children's developing ability to understand, express and manage emotions in ways that support learning, relationships and wellbeing. These skills are closely linked with executive function, including children's ability to remember instructions, control impulses and shift flexibly between activities. Shared picturebook reading may provide a natural, low-cost way for caregivers to support these skills through everyday interaction.
Families in the randomised part of the study will be allocated to one of two 8-week shared reading programmes. In the emotion-focused group, caregivers will receive training in strategies such as naming emotions, discussing why characters feel as they do, talking about consequences of emotions and modelling ways to manage feelings. In the comparison group, caregivers will receive training in standard dialogic picturebook reading strategies, such as naming, describing, sequencing and asking open questions, without an explicit focus on emotions or emotion regulation. Both groups will use the same picturebooks and will be asked to complete three shared reading sessions per week at home.
The main hypothesis is that children in the emotion-focused shared reading group will show greater improvement in emotion regulation from baseline to 12-month follow-up than children in the standard dialogic shared reading group. The study will also examine whether the programme affects children's executive function, caregiver wellbeing and caregiver emotion regulation. Additional exploratory analyses will examine caregiver-child interaction processes and whether caregiver or child characteristics are associated with different intervention effects.
The study will recruit caregiver-child dyads through state primary schools in Greater London. Children will complete age-appropriate tasks and caregivers will complete questionnaires at baseline and follow-up. A laboratory subsample may also complete additional behavioural, observational and neurophysiological assessments. The study is low risk, non-invasive and does not involve medical treatment.
详细描述
Sharing Tales That Teach is a two-arm, parallel-group randomised controlled trial of a caregiver-delivered shared picturebook reading intervention for young children and their primary caregivers. The trial is embedded within a broader longitudinal cohort study examining the development of emotion regulation and executive function across the transition from Reception to Year 1.
The study is grounded in developmental evidence that emotion regulation and executive function are closely related capacities during early childhood. Emotion regulation supports children's ability to understand, express and manage emotional states, while executive function supports goal-directed behaviour through working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. Shared picturebook reading is used as the intervention context because it provides a naturalistic setting in which caregivers can scaffold language, attention, emotional understanding and self-regulatory strategies through everyday interaction.
Participants in the randomised subsample will be individually allocated at the caregiver-child dyad level to either an emotion-focused shared picturebook reading intervention or a standard dialogic picturebook reading active control condition. The active comparator is designed to control for shared reading exposure, caregiver attention, receipt of training materials and use of the same picturebooks, while excluding explicit emotion-focused and mental-state scaffolding. This design is intended to assess whether any observed benefit is attributable to the emotion-focused components of the intervention rather than to shared reading exposure alone.
Both conditions will be delivered by caregivers in the family home over an 8-week period. Caregivers in the emotion-focused condition will receive standardised training materials introducing strategies such as emotion labelling, discussion of emotional causes and consequences, modelling of regulatory strategies and reflective questioning. Caregivers in the standard dialogic reading condition will receive training in narrative and dialogic reading techniques, including naming, describing, sequencing and encouraging child participation through open-ended questions. Families in both groups will be asked to complete three shared reading sessions per week and will continue with usual educational provision and typical home or school activities.
Assessments will be conducted at baseline and approximately 12 months later. Home-based assessments will include age-appropriate child behavioural tasks and caregiver-completed questionnaires. A laboratory subsample will complete additional behavioural, observational and neurophysiological assessments at the University of Greenwich, including EEG/ERP measures where appropriate and tolerable for the child. Caregiver-child interaction tasks will be recorded and coded to examine features such as emotion talk, joint attention, turn taking and scaffolding. Audio recordings of the first and final home reading sessions will be collected to support assessment of intervention fidelity and differentiation between conditions.
研究设计
- 研究类型
- Interventional
- 分配方式
- Randomized
- 干预模型
- Parallel
- 主要目的
- Other
- 盲法
- Single (Outcomes Assessor)
盲法说明
Caregivers and children will not be masked to allocation because the intervention is behavioural and the instructional content differs between conditions. Both study conditions will be presented neutrally as shared-reading programmes and delivered through standardised video materials to minimise expectancy effects. Outcome assessors responsible for scoring behavioural tasks, EEG/ERP data and observational measures will be blinded to group allocation. Data analysts will use anonymised group codes during the primary analyses, with allocation revealed only after the primary analysis code has been finalised.
入排标准
- 年龄范围
- 48 Months 至 59 Months（Child）
- 性别
- All
- 接受健康志愿者
- 是
入选标准
- •Child aged 4 to 5 years at baseline assessment
- •Child enrolled in a participating state primary school
- •At least one primary caregiver willing to participate in shared reading activities and study assessments
- •Caregiver has sufficient proficiency in English to engage with intervention materials and questionnaires
排除标准
- •Child has an identified sensory impairment, such as uncorrected hearing or vision difficulties, that would impede engagement with study tasks
- •Family is unable to commit to baseline and follow-up assessments
研究者
Benjamin Sigsworth
Principal Investigator
University of Greenwich