Parents' Interactions with Their First-Grade Children During Storybook Reading and Relations with Subsequent Home Reading Activity and Reading Achievement

Abstract

This study examined parents' verbal and affective interactions with their first-grade children during shared storybook reading and how these interactions relate to growth in children's reading activity and achievement. Participants varied in income level and ethnicity. The nature and amount of meaning-related talk was similar regardless of whether the parent or child assumed primary responsibility for reading, but there was more talk about the reading process itself (word recognition) when the child read. Talk that went beyond the immediate content of the story was more common among middle-income families. Positive affective interactions were associated with meaning-related talk, and negative interactions were associated with parental attempts to have the child use decoding strategies to identify unknown words. Affective quality was an important contributor to children's reading of challenging materials in third grade but not to their reading achievement. Implications for advising parents on reading with their children are considered.