Shared Book Reading Intervention for Children with Language Impairment: Using Parents-as-aides in Language Intervention

The aim of this research was to investigate the efficacy of a shared book reading intervention administered by parents of preschool children with language impairment. Thirty-six preschool children with language impairment were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received direct group intervention sessions for the children and parent training on how to conduct shared book reading at home. The shared reading intervention had two objectives: (a) promoting children's print concepts and (b) enhancing their oral language development. Videotapes of shared book reading were collected at pre-test and post-test and were coded to yield measures of parents' intervention strategies, the ratio of parent-to-child utterances, and children's oral language. The results indicated that parents in the experimental group used significantly more print concepts than the control group. The ratio of parent-to-child utterances significantly differentiated the experimental and control groups in Cohort 2, but not Cohort 1. No intervention effects were found for use of parents' shared book reading strategies or children's mean length of utterance, vocabulary diversity, or responses. The data suggest that a brief shared book reading intervention for children with specific language impairment impacted on parent's use of print concepts but had no effects on children's outcomes. Implications include suggestions for augmenting the dosage of intervention by providing parents with more focused training.