Shared Picture Book Reading and Language Development

It has been argued that the presentation of simple images devoid of detail or elaboration, in combination with the fact that children can explore picture books at their own pace, makes them a particularly effective way of supporting the embedding of words and concepts. Observational studies have also shown that mothers label objects more frequently and provide more consistent feedback during shared reading than during other activities, such as play. Frequency of shared reading has been shown to predict language development.

Dialogical book-sharing interventions focus on working with parents on an individual or group basis to introduce them to the interactive principles of book sharing, including asking open-ended questions, providing praise and encouragement, and frequent labelling in response to the child's focus of interest. A small number of studies have shown that filming mothers reading to their children and then providing constructive feedback provides benefits in terms of children's language acquisition and frequency and enjoyment of book sharing for parents. Small-scale evaluations of the use of video to teach dialogical reading techniques, which offers benefits in terms of cost-effectiveness - have also shown promise.