Supporting Children's School Readiness.

NCT ID: NCT02854462

Last Updated: 2018-05-04

Basic Information

• Recruitment Status: COMPLETED
• Clinical Phase: NA
• Total Enrollment: 100 participants
• Study Classification: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Start Date: 2016-08-10
• Study Completion Date: 2018-03-22

Brief Summary

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

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.

Conditions

Language Development

Study Design

• Allocation Method: RANDOMIZED
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Primary Study Purpose: BASIC_SCIENCE
• Blinding Strategy: TRIPLE

Study Groups

Language comprehension intervention

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.

Group Type: EXPERIMENTAL

Language comprehension intervention

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Counting intervention

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.

Group Type: ACTIVE_COMPARATOR

Counting intervention

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Interventions

Language comprehension intervention

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Counting intervention

Intervention Type: BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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.

• Minimum Eligible Age: 50 Months
• Maximum Eligible Age: 56 Months
• Eligible Sex: ALL
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: Yes

Sponsors

University of Leeds

OTHER

Sponsor Role: collaborator

University of Sheffield

OTHER

Sponsor Role: lead

Responsible Party

Danielle Matthews

Reader in Cognitive Development

Responsibility Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

Danielle E Matthews, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Sheffield

Catherine Davies, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

University of Leeds

Locations

University of Sheffield

Sheffield, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom

Countries

United Kingdom

Other Identifiers

R/139470-11-1-INFERENCE

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id