Maternal Shared Reading with Toddlers Born Preterm and Full-Term

Abstract

Reading aloud to children is a predictor of later language and literacy development. Children as young as 7 months of age benefit from shared reading experiences. The purpose of this study was to evaluate and compare mothers’ shared reading to their children in two groups: children born preterm and children born full-term. Sixteen mother-child dyads, 8 mothers with children born preterm and 8 mothers with children born full-term matched for child gender and maternal education participated when the children were an average of 13 months of age. The mothers were video-recorded as they shared two books with their children. The mothers’ shared book reading behaviors and use of print awareness was examined using the Toddler Emergent Literacy Checklist. There was no difference between the two groups of mothers with respect to shared book reading characteristics. Both groups of mothers used a variety of shared reading behaviors, such as labeling pictures, pointing to pictures, describing pictures, asking questions about pictures, asking the child to turn the page, and using child-directed prosody. Regarding print awareness, few of these behaviors were present in either group. Tracking print was present only in a small number of the mothers of the children born full-term. Together, these results provide new information on the early shared book reading of mothers of children born preterm and full-term.