Training caregivers to facilitate communicative participation of preschool children with language impairment during storybook reading.
This study reports the effects of training six adult caregivers to use an interactive reading routine, termed Complete Reading Cycle (CRC), during storybook reading with their preschool children, aged 3;2 to 3;5, who exhibited language impairment. Caregivers were taught to be more responsive to their children's communicative attempts during reading and to more actively engage the children in reading the story. Measures of child change included communicative participation and lexical diversity of utterances during adult-child shared reading. Children significantly increased the frequency of communicative turns, total number of words, and number of different words produced during shared storybook reading as a result of caregiver training. Five of the six children had higher mean frequencies for story initiations during training. However, increases in initiations were not statistically significant, with considerable variability across children for this measure.


OBJECTIVE
(1) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to discuss positive communicative changes in children with language impairment during adult-child storybook reading. (2) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to use the storybook reading procedures with parents of preschool children exhibiting language impairment.
Crowe
Linda K
LK
Program in Communication Sciences and Disorders, School of Family Studies and Human Services, Kansas State University, 317 Justin Hall, Manhattan, KS 66506-1403, USA. lcrowe@ksu.edu
Norris
Janet A
JA
Hoffman
Paul R
PR
D000328:Adult; D017028:Caregivers / Q000193:education*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D003142:Communication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007806:Language Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D008297:Male; D011932:Reading; D013068:Speech Production Measurement; D013663:Teaching