Supporting Children's School Readiness.

Study Overview
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Brief Summary
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The aim of this project is to test whether training parents to ask their children 'inference- eliciting' questions during book reading is effective in promoting story comprehension for 4-year-olds from a range of socio-economic backgrounds.

Detailed Description
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Language comprehension relies on the ability to make local and global inferences (e.g., inferring what a pronoun refers to, or inferring why a protagonist in a story did something based on information distributed through the text). These skills develop in the preschool years and are demonstrated when children make sense of stories that are read to them. While important for later reading ability and academic success, relatively little is known about whether anything can be done to improve inference-making skills in the preschool years. One possibility is that parent-child book reading would help. During book reading, some parents naturally ask their children questions about the story that would require them to make inferences about the text. The current study is designed to test whether doing this promotes children's ability to make inferences. Half the parents in this study will be given books with inference eliciting questions added to them and will be provided with training about how to ask these questions and respond to their children's answers. The other half of the parents will be given a maths exercise book and asked to spend the same amount of time per day working through this.

Official Title
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A Randomised Control Trial to Test the Effect of Parents' Inference-eliciting Questions During Shared Book Reading on 4-year-olds' Listening Comprehension

Conditions
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Language Development

Intervention / Treatment
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* Behavioral: Language comprehension intervention
* Behavioral: Counting intervention


Participation Criteria
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria: Children are: First born Full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely) With birth weight over 2.5 kg Being raised as monolingual English speakers Exclusion Criteria: Neither caregivers nor infants have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability.

Ages Eligible for Study
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Minimum Age: 50 Months
Maximum Age: 56 Months

Sexes Eligible for Study
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All

Accepts Healthy Volunteers
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Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Study Plan
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How is the study designed?
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Design Details

Primary Purpose: Basic Science
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention Model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Triple


Arms and Interventions

| Participant Group/Arm | Intervention/Treatment |
| --- | --- |
| Experimental: Language comprehension intervention<br>The intervention will run for 4 weeks. Caregivers will be provided with storybooks (e.g., Percy the Park Keeper) that have been amended to include inference-eliciting questions. Caregivers will be trained (with a video) to ask these questions and respond to their children's answers during shared reading sessions. They will be asked to read one book per day. Caregivers will keep a reading diary. | Behavioral: Language comprehension intervention<br> <br> |
| Active Comparator: Counting intervention<br>The intervention will run for 4 weeks. Caregivers will be provided with a book 'At home with counting' that is made up of age appropriate maths exercises. Caregivers will trained (with a video) to work through one page of the book per day. This should take the same amount of time as the activity in the language intervention condition. Caregivers will keep a counting diary. | Behavioral: Counting intervention<br> <br> |

What is the study measuring?
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Primary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Change after 4 weeks in children's ability to answer inference questions. | An age-appropriate test of inferencing ability has been developed for this study including vignettes developed by the Language and Reading Research Consortium. Children listen to short vignettes and are then asked questions that require them to make local and global inferences based on the information in the stories. | Baseline: when child is 4 years 3 months. Post test: 4 weeks post intervention | 

Secondary Outcome Measures

| Outcome Measure | Measure Description | Time Frame |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Change in NFER baseline assessment | This is an age appropriate test of maths and language ability. | Baseline: when child is 4 years 3 months - 4 years 6 months. Post test: 4 weeks post intervention | 

 Terms related to the study
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Keywords Provided by Centre Hospitalier Valida
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Language Development, Shared Picture Book reading, Preschoolers, Inference making