Evaluating the usability of a conversational agent to enhance parent-child shared reading interactions

Interactive shared book reading – particularly when parents engage in decontextualized talk which goes beyond the here-and-now – is an evidenced-based approach to promote preschool-aged children's engagement with a story and emergent literacy. Parental training of interactive reading often involves an experienced clinician or researcher who can provide personalized, “in-the-moment” instruction. Although such methods are highly effective, they are expensive and time-intensive, often limiting participation by busy parents. Here, we extend this approach through a digital tool designed to encourage dyadic interaction during shared book reading via a conversational agent (CA). In this paper, we describe the results of a one-month usability test of the app with N = 20 parents and their 3-to-5-year-old children. The app first provided parents with information on interactive reading strategies. During reading, it used AI technology to deliver interactive prompts aimed at promoting decontextualized conversation. Parent-child conversation while reading with the CA was nearly double that of conversation when reading without the CA. Approximately one month later, parent and child talk while reading with CA remained high. Additional analyses indicated that parents most often expanded on the CA's prompts rather than repeating them, thereby eliciting more verbal responses from children. Results indicate that CAs have the potential to enrich dyadic interactions around print books in ways known to promote children's early literacy abilities. Future directions around the scalability and efficacy of CA technologies to augment literacy practices are discussed.