TY - JOUR
T1 - Promoting Mother-Infant Book Sharing and Infant Attention and Language Development in an Impoverished South African Population
T2 - A Pilot Study
AU - Cooper, Peter J.
AU - Vally, Zahir
AU - Cooper, Hallam
AU - Radford, Theo
AU - Sharples, Arthur
AU - Tomlinson, Mark
AU - Murray, Lynne
PY - 2014/3
Y1 - 2014/3
N2 - The low rates of child literacy in South Africa are cause for considerable concern. Research from the developed world shows that parental sharing of picture books with infants and young children is beneficial for child language and cognitive development, as well as literacy skills. We conducted a pilot study to examine whether such benefits might extend to an impoverished community in South Africa, by evaluating the impact of training mothers in book sharing with their 14-18 month old infants. Seventeen mothers received book sharing training; and 13 mothers did not, but instead received a comparison training in toy play. We assessed the mothers' behavior during both book sharing and toy play before and after training, and we also assessed infant attention and language. Mothers receiving book sharing training engaged well with it, and they also benefited from it; thus, compared to the comparison group mothers, they became more sensitive, more facilitating, and more elaborative with their infants during book sharing, and they also became more sensitive to their infants during toy play. In addition, infants whose mothers received the book sharing training showed greater benefits than the comparison group infants in both their attention and language. Training in book sharing for families living in conditions of marked socio-economic adversity in South Africa has the potential to be of considerable benefit to child developmental progress. A large scale controlled trial is required to confirm this.
AB - The low rates of child literacy in South Africa are cause for considerable concern. Research from the developed world shows that parental sharing of picture books with infants and young children is beneficial for child language and cognitive development, as well as literacy skills. We conducted a pilot study to examine whether such benefits might extend to an impoverished community in South Africa, by evaluating the impact of training mothers in book sharing with their 14-18 month old infants. Seventeen mothers received book sharing training; and 13 mothers did not, but instead received a comparison training in toy play. We assessed the mothers' behavior during both book sharing and toy play before and after training, and we also assessed infant attention and language. Mothers receiving book sharing training engaged well with it, and they also benefited from it; thus, compared to the comparison group mothers, they became more sensitive, more facilitating, and more elaborative with their infants during book sharing, and they also became more sensitive to their infants during toy play. In addition, infants whose mothers received the book sharing training showed greater benefits than the comparison group infants in both their attention and language. Training in book sharing for families living in conditions of marked socio-economic adversity in South Africa has the potential to be of considerable benefit to child developmental progress. A large scale controlled trial is required to confirm this.
KW - Book sharing
KW - Early literacy
KW - Infant attention
KW - Language development
KW - Maternal sensitivity
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U2 - 10.1007/s10643-013-0591-8
DO - 10.1007/s10643-013-0591-8
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84893947835
SN - 1082-3301
VL - 42
SP - 143
EP - 152
JO - Early Childhood Education Journal
JF - Early Childhood Education Journal
IS - 2
ER -