How Parents Can Help Babies Learn to Talk With Picture Books.

Language Development Clinical Trial

Official title:

A Randomised Control Trial to Test the Effect of Parent Contingent Talk During Shared Book Reading on Infant Language Learning.

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Completed

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02780557
• Other study ID #: R/139470-11-1-INFANCY
• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Start date: August 24, 2016
• Est. completion date: March 22, 2018

Study information

• Verified date: May 2018
• Source: University of Sheffield
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Interventional

Clinical Trial Summary

The aim of this project is to test whether giving parents advice about book reading is effective in promoting language learning for infants from a range of socio-economic backgrounds.

Description:

Children from disadvantaged families tend to have limited language skills compared to their advantaged peers. While many factors contribute to language ability, two aspects of the early caregiving environment are known to be correlated with child language outcomes 1) caregiver-child book reading and 2) caregiver contingent talk. Contingent talk refers to a style of communication whereby the caregiver talks about what is in their infant's current focus of attention. This style of talking can be facilitated when parents read books with their babies. The aim of this research is to establish whether asking parents to engage in contingent talk in the context of book reading promotes vocabulary learning. This study will compare the effects of an intervention to promote contingent talk against a control where parents are given books but not given any training in how to read them in a contingent manner. The study will include children from socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged families.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Enrollment: 156
• Est. completion date: March 22, 2018
• Est. primary completion date: January 30, 2018
• Accepts healthy volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers
• Gender: All
• Age group: 11 Months to 11 Months

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

Infants must be:

• first born and singletons

• full term (i.e. born no more than 3 weeks prematurely)

• with birth weight over 2.5 kg.

Primary caregivers must:

• work less than 24 hours per week (i.e., be the caregiver the child spends most time with)

• be raising their child as monolingual English speakers.

Exclusion criteria:

Neither caregivers nor infants must have any significant known physical, mental or learning disability.

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Language Development

Intervention

Behavioral:
• Contingent Reading Intervention
Caregivers will be provided with 6 picture books. They will be trained to use contingent talk when looking at picture books with their infants. They will be asked to spend 10 mintues each day engaging in contingent talk while looking at picture books. The intervention will run for 4 months. Parents will be asked to keep a daily reading diary.
• Book Provision Control
Caregivers will be provided with 6 picture books. They will not be trained to read with their child. They will receive information from other sources (e.g. health visitors and Book Start schemes) as normal.

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
United Kingdom	University of Sheffield	Sheffield	South Yorkshire

Sponsors (1)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
University of Sheffield

Country where clinical trial is conducted

United Kingdom, 

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Other	Change in caregiver contingent talk while book reading	Video recordings of dyads reading books will be analysed for quantity of caregiver contingent talk.	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months
Primary	Change in infant expressive vocabulary	Parents will complete a standardised assessment of vocabulary, the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI).	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months
Secondary	Change in caregiver reported frequency of reading	Parents will complete a questionnaire about how frequently they read with their child.	Baseline: 11 months, outcome: 15 months
Secondary	Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Accuracy	Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). Infants will sit in front of a computer screen with a picture on either side of it (e.g., a bottle and a shoe). We will measure the accuracy with which they look to the correct picture upon hearing a word that describes it.	15 months
Secondary	Infant Real Time Language Understanding: Reaction Time	Infants' real-time comprehension of familiar words will be assessed at 15 months using the looking-while-listening (LWL) procedure (Fernald et al., 2008). We will measure the time it takes the child to look from a distractor to the target.	15 months