Shared book reading and children’s language comprehension skills: the moderating role of parental discipline practices

Abstract

Parental discipline practices, parent–child shared book reading and children’s emergent literacy skills were assessed among 76 parents and their children in the summer before the children started Kindergarten. Parents provided narrative responses to open-ended questions about how they would handle common discipline challenges with children and rated their likelihood of using physical punishment. Parents also reported the number of books they read with their children each week and completed a checklist assessing their familiarity with the titles and authors of children’s books. Children’s emergent literacy skills were assessed with individually administered tests. Analyses of covariance indicated that shared book reading was reliably associated with children’s language comprehension skills only among parents whose responses to discipline scenarios included relatively high levels of nondirective reasoning. Parents who expressed a willingness to consider physical punishment had children with lower language comprehension skills regardless of the quantity of shared book reading. These effects were reliable after taking into account the effects of parental education and children’s nonverbal reasoning skills.