Using a fairly different method, Harris and Schroeder (2011) investigated maternal story telling styles as they occurred in the context of a constructive play activity. In this particular study, mothers were asked to tell their children a story about the objects/characters involved in the play activity and have their children re-tell the story to them. The researchers employing a story grammar schema to evaluate mothers' statements and strategies found that that their story telling styles and narrative eliciting styles cohered into two distinct categories. Thirty eight percent of the mothers used an inclusive story grammar style, and 62 percent used a restrictive story grammar style. Mothers using an inclusive story grammar style spent most of their time providing detailed instructions on the nature of the activity, providing detailed descriptions of the actions of the characters, and conversations between the characters; whereas mothers employing a restrictive story grammar style gave a brief overview of the goals of the activity, and spent most of their time discussing the location of the characters. Children of mothers, who employed the former narrative style were more engaged in the play activity as evidenced by their questions and comments during the interaction. With reference to narrative eliciting strategies, 16 percent of the mothers were identified as narrative scaffolders and 84 percent were identified as narrative solicitors. Narrative scaffolders elicited recall from their children by asking questions, using prompting statements, and providing corrective feedback to their children. In contrast, narrative solicitors spent most of their time eliciting recall about the story from their children through a series of prompting questions and provided little feedback to their children about their performance. Children of mothers identified as narrative scaffolders were able to retell more of the story about the play activity in comparison to children of mothers who were classified as narrative solicitors.

Collectively this corpus of research demonstrates that there is a great deal of variation in maternal narrative styles, and these styles differ to some extent depending on narrative context. Furthermore there is evidence to suggest that styles that invite children in the narrative activity appear to promote their active engagement.

In addition to examining maternal stylistic differences in narrative, play, and book reading activities, literacy researchers have also explored the quality of the book reading and literacy environment of the home. The comprehensive findings from this body of research suggests that literacy artifacts (books, newspapers), functional uses of literacy (reading), parental attitudes about literacy especially reading, occur with varying frequency in the homes of preschool children (Phillips and Lonigan, 2009). That is there are cultural and socioeconomic status differences with respect to the frequency with which parents provide their children with access to literacy artifacts, and engage in literacy related behaviors in the home environment with their children (Leseman and de Jong, 1998; Frijters et al., 2000; Burgess et al., 2002).

Only a few studies to date have looked at the conversational, book reading, or narrative styles of African American mothers engaged in a variety of narrative activities with their children. Those studies which do exist have focused mainly on low income African American mothers and their book reading interactions with their infants and toddlers (Pelligrini et al., 1999; Hammer et al., 2005). While these studies have provided literacy researchers with a wealth of information on the book reading behaviors and book reading styles of low income African American mothers, they yield little information on the book reading behaviors of middle class African American mothers. This is problematic for several reasons. First, the findings from the research on low income African American mothers are frequently generalized to account for the behaviors and practices of African American middle class mothers and as such researchers have an inaccurate and incomplete picture of the literacy practices and behaviors which occur in an economically diverse sample of African American mothers and their children. Second, as Heath (1983) and Tamis-LeMonda et al. (2008), state an area as critical as literacy should include explorations of a diverse array of cultural and economic groups; as culture broadly and narrowly defined plays a pivotal role in children's access to literacy materials, interactions with literacy materials, and subsequently their literacy performance in a formal academic setting. This gap in the literature serves as the major impetus for this present investigation.

This study is designed to address the following research questions.

Our first research question explores the book reading behavior of African American mothers engaged in a shared book reading activity with their children. We operationalize maternal book reading behavior in several ways. First, we examine their use of story grammar elements. Story grammar refers to the internal structure of simple stories or narratives. This internal structure frequently involves a beginning, settings, character descriptions, goals, actions, consequences, dialog, internal responses, and endings (Mandler and Johnson, 1977). Research indicates that stories which cohere to a formula that contains a beginning, middle, and ending are easily understood and recalled better by both adults and children (McCabe and Peterson, 1991). While books are traditionally designed to follow a story grammar structure, we are interested in determining the frequency with which mothers' emphasize those aspects of story grammar structure in their book reading behavior. Second, we examine their use of narrative eliciting strategies as they engage their children in the book reading activity. Narrative eliciting strategies as defined by Harris and Schroeder (2011) are questions, prompts, and statements employed by mothers to maintain and involve their children in the book reading activity.

Our second research question examines how preschool children participate in the book reading activity with their mothers. Our specific interest is to explore the story grammar elements present in the preschoolers' vocalizations about the story. That is, do they use the same story grammar elements that mothers use? Researchers have found a correspondence between the verbalizations that mothers use in their narratives, and the verbalizations that children use as they re-tell stories (Haden et al., 1997).

Our third question investigates the quality of book readingtype activities available to the preschool children in their home environment. Using the Parental Support for Reading Activities in the Home Environment we queried mothers about their children's access to print, reading activities, and reading interactions in the home environment. We are also interested in determining the relationship between maternal book reading style and the quality of their home book reading environment.

In summary, the goal of this pilot project was to examine the book reading interactions of African American mothers and their preschool children. Mothers were observed engaged in a shared book reading activity with their preschool children, and a story grammar schema was used to identify their specific book reading strategies and book reading styles. We were also interested in determining the story grammar elements present in the preschoolers' verbalizations about the stories. In addition we asked mothers to respond to questions about the types of book reading interactions and activities available to their children in the home environment.

## **MATERIALS AND METHODS PARTCIPANTS**

Eight African American mothers and their preschool children recruited from childcare centers in a tri-county area participated in the study. Four of the children were males, and four were females. The children ranged in from 36 to 60 months (*M* = 54 month, *SD* = 7*.*1). The mothers on average were 30 years of age, married, and college educated. They were offered a payment of ten dollars for their participation in the research, and the children were offered a small toy.

#### **STIMULI**

#### *Story books*

Three story books were used as the stimuli in this present investigation: *Julius* (Johnson, 1993) which is a story about a young pig who lives with Mia and her parents; *Grandfather and I* (Buckely and Ormerod, 1994) is a story which focuses on the relationship between an African American grandfather and his grandson as they go about their daily activities; and *Somewhere in Africa* (Mennen and Daly, 1997) depicts the travels of a young boy as he journeys throughout Africa. The books for the most part are of equal length, contain the same narrative structure; all are illustrated and portray the lives of African or African American children and their families in central plot lines.

*Parental Support for Reading Activities in the Home Environment Questionnaire* is an 11 item questionnaire divided into two sections. The first section entitled*, Parental and Child Reading Interactions* contains questions that ask mothers to provide information on how frequently they engage in book reading activities in the home with their children. Examples of questions include: 1) How frequently do you read to you child? 2) How frequently does your child asked to be read to? 3) How frequently do you discuss reading material with their child? Answers to these questions were scored on a 5 point scale ranging from 5 (daily) to 1 (never). Additional questions asked mothers to provide information indicating whether their children had a regular reading time, at what age did they begin reading to their child, how frequently the child tries to read to them, to identity family members who read to the child, and how frequently is storytelling without a book a regular family activity?

The second section, *Support for Reading Activities in the Home Environment* is comprised of questions which probe mothers about the ways in which they provide support for reading related activities in the home environment. Examples include: (1) Does your child have any magazine or book subscriptions? (2) How many books are in your home? (3) Do you purchase games to help the child learn to read?  (5) Does your child check out books from the library? Answers to these questions were coded yes or no.

Mothers were also asked to provide basic demographic information. Copies of the full questionnaire may be obtained from the investigators upon request.

#### *Procedure*

Upon arrival to the testing site, the mothers first completed the Parental Support for Reading Activities in the Home Environment Questionnaire. After completion of the questionnaire, the mothers were then videotaped reading one of three books to their children. The mothers were instructed by the researcher to read the books to their children in a way that they were comfortable with, there were no time constraints placed on the session and they were free to determine when to terminate the session.

#### *Coding system*

A modification of the Harris and Schroeder Story Grammar Coding System (2011) was used to code maternal and child story grammar elements and maternal narrative eliciting strategies. The videotapes were first transcribed and the transcripts were then coded by undergraduate psychology research assistants blind to the research questions of the study. The behaviors were coded for their frequency of occurrence.

#### *Maternal (M) child (C) story grammar elements*

*(Continued)*

#### **Continued**

#### *Maternal narrative eliciting strategies*

#### **RELIABILITY**

Two raters independently coded 20 percent of the transcripts for reliability. Percentage of agreement was used as the reliability estimate and there was 90 percent reliability agreement among the raters for the strategies. Any disagreements were resolved through discussion. The remainder of the transcripts were divided and coded independently by the raters.

## **RESULTS**

The results section begins with a discussion of the Parental Support for Reading Activities in the Home Environment, continues with a presentation of the descriptive statistics on the story grammar elements and narrative eliciting strategies present in the mothers' book reading and with a discussion of the story grammar elements present in the children's vocalizations about the stories. The section concludes with a discussion of maternal book reading styles.

## **PARENTAL SUPPORT FOR READING ACTIVITIES IN THE HOME ENVIRONMENT**

Descriptive statistics for the home environment questionnaire are presented in **Table 1**. As the data in the table indicate, 83% of the mothers report reading to their children daily; and over half of the children frequently solicit requests to be read to from their mothers or from other family members. Fifty percent of the children have a regular reading time, over half of the mothers report they frequently engage in discussing reading materials with their children and the majority of the children have a favorite book. Over half of the children have books and or magazine subscriptions; and sixty-six percent of the mothers purchase specific material to help their children learn to read. The majority of the mothers report that their children have a library card and all report that their children check out books from the library.

#### **STORY GRAMMAR ELEMENTS PRESENT IN MOTHERS' BOOK READING**

**Figure 1** provides information on the mean number of story grammar elements present in the mothers' book reading. As the figure shows, mothers used a variety of story grammar elements while reading the books to their children, however they placed special attention on discussing the actions of the characters (*M* = 7, *SD* = 4*.*5) and the dialog between characters, (*M* = 2*.*3, *SD* = 1*.*9), they mentioned the wants and desires of the characters in the story (*M* = 2*.*1, *SD* = 3*.*6), highlighted the settings of the story (*M* = 1*.*87, *SD* = 1*.*64), and stressed the social roles and the physical appearances of the characters in the book (*M* = 1*.*37, *SD* = 0*.*74).

#### **NARRATIVE ELICITING STRATEGIES PRESENT IN MOTHERS' BOOK READING**

**Figure 2** presents the means on the narrative eliciting strategies used by mothers to engage their children in the book reading interaction. As the figure illustrates, while mothers used an assortment of narrative eliciting strategies, they most often employed refocusing statements to elicit engagement in the interaction from their children (*M* = 6*.*3, *SD* = 7*.*65), asked general questions about the characters in the story book (*M* = 3*.*7; *SD* = 2*.*25), and frequently encouraged their children's vocalizations during the book reading activity (*M* = 1, *SD* = 1*.*19).

## **PRESCHOOLER STORY GRAMMAR USE DURING THE BOOK READING ACTIVITY**

**Figure 3** depicts the means for the preschoolers' story grammar use during the book reading interaction. While they used considerably fewer story grammar elements than their mothers, they engaged in the book reading interaction by commenting on the

#### **Table 1 | Parental support for reading activities in the home environment.**

actions carried out by the characters (*M* = 2*.*2, *SD* = 2*.*18), generating the names of the characters of the book (*M* = 1*.*6, *SD* = 1*.*99), and remarking on the dialog or conversations occurring between the characters (*M* = 1*.*3, *SD* = 1*.*9).

#### **MATERNAL BOOK READING STYLES**

To determine maternal book reading styles a k-means cluster analysis was computed on the maternal story grammar frequencies and the maternal narrative eliciting strategies frequencies. Based on the findings from our previous research, we pre specified two clusters (Harris and Schroeder, 2011). The results of the k-mean cluster analysis for this study revealed that thirty eight percent of the mothers were in cluster one, and identified as employing a *modified text focused book* reading style and this style was characterized by an overall greater use of story grammar elements and narrative eliciting strategies. Sixty two percent of the mothers were in cluster two, and classified as using a *text engager* book reading style and characterized by using fewer story grammar elements and narrative eliciting strategies while reading the books to their children.

#### **MODIFIED TEXT FOCUSED BOOK READING STYLE**

We classified these mothers as employing a modified text focused book reading style for the following reasons. First, they adhered to a story grammar structure while reading. Second, they modified that structure to include narrative eliciting strategies. The following excerpt is an example of the pattern of interaction.

#### *Story beginnings*

Mother: This is called Grandfather and I. Sound interesting. Hmm. Grandfather and I are going for a walk. It will be a slow walk because Grandfather and I never hurry. We walk along and stop and look just as long as we like.

Child: Hurry, Hurry

#### *Story settings*

Mother: Ashraf lives in Africa, not Africa where lions laze in golden grass, not Africa where crocodiles glide through muddy rivers silent a hungry not Africa where Zebra's gallop over Great Plains, Asraf lives in a city at the very tip of the great African content.

Mother: Continues reading. In summer, the city lies soaked in African sun, dry under endless blue sky. Ashraf lives in the city. Where does Ashraf live?

Child: Points to page

#### *Character actions*

Mother: Turns the page umhmm, Hurry. But grandfather and I never hurry. Look (points at the page). We walk along and walk along. That could be a little Christmas tree. Father hurries off to work and hurry home again. Does your father hurry?

Child: Nods and says sometimes he does?

#### *Refocusing statements*

Mother: Look J look at the book. Julius made too much noise. Come on Sweetie.

Child: (Stops his attempts to get off the chair).

Mother: Look at the hats. Which one is red? Child: (points to the hat and smiles). That one.

#### **TEXT ENGAGER BOOK READING STYLE**

We labeled these mothers as using a text engager book reading style for the following reasons. One, they used fewer story grammar elements in reading the book to their children and two, they began their reading with narrative eliciting strategies and continued to use these strategies throughout their reading. The example below illustrates the pattern of interaction between these mothers and their children.

#### *They began their stories by naming the characters and continued the book reading activity by asking questions*

Mother: It says somewhere in Africa. You see that? See the picture? He's got a book in his hand.

Child: Like us?

Mother: Mm Hm Begins to read the book.

Mother: (Stops, and asks) what's that right here?

Child: Airplane.

Mother: Good. . . . Continues reading. Not Africa where crocodiles glide through the muddy rivers. See them? The crocodiles?

Child: They came to eat the boy? Mother: They are not going to eat the boy. Child: Uh Huh!! Mother: Continues Reading. Look at the Zebra's Child: They run from somebody? Mother: No.

#### *Used Fill in the Blank Statements to Complete the Child's Story*

Mother: Who is this? What is her name?

Child: I don't know*......* Mother: Mia and who might these people be? Child: Father Mother: Father and Child: Mommy

#### *Recasts the child's statements to be consistent with hers*

Mother: Mia's parents did think they would like Julius. He showed them no fun and no sharing. Mia loved Julius. Why didn't Mia's parents like Julius?

Child: He's no fun?

Mother: He showed them no fun and no sharing.

We evaluated the Parental Support for Reading Activities in the Home Environment to determine if there might be differences in the home environments of modified text focused mothers and the text engager mothers. No significant differences were observed.

#### **DISCUSSION**

The general goal of this research was to explore the ways in which middle class African American mothers' structure and guide a book reading interaction for their preschool children. To accomplish this, we examined the presence of story grammar elements in their book reading, the types of narrative eliciting strategies they employed to maintain their children's attention during the book reading activity, and queried them about the quantity and quality of book reading activities and interactions available to their children in their home environment. In addition, we identified the types of story grammar elements present in the preschoolers vocalizations about the stories.

Our first finding suggests that middle class African American mothers use a variety of story grammar elements while reading books to their children. That is, they emphasize the actions of the characters, they engage in some form of character dialog, and they reference the goals of the story. To elicit contributions to the book reading interaction from their children, they employ refocusing statements, ask general questions, and encourage the

children's participation. The preschoolers, while they produce fewer vocalizations about the books than their mothers, similar to their mothers, commented on the actions of the characters and remarked on the dialog taking place between the characters.

Our second finding reveals that there are book reading styles that distinguish these mothers. A small percentage of the mothers in our study employed a modified text focused book reading style. In this instance, they began the story with an orientation indicating that the story had begun, and continued to focus on such salient aspects of the story such as setting, goals and descriptions of the actions of the characters in the story. While it is difficult to directly compare these styles to the styles other literacy researchers have observed; and that was not the intent of our research, we speculate that this style may be similar to the text reader style identified by Hammer et al. (2005). However, our mothers differ in that they rarely read directly from the book and they modified their reading to include strategies to re-engage their children in the reading activity. The majority of the mothers in our study used a text engager book reading style. They began their reading with questions to immediately capture their children's attention in the book reading activity. Their style may be reflective of what Heath (1983) refers to "using the book as a prop style." Books serve as a prop to facilitate interaction and perhaps an opportunity for the children to gain rudimentary knowledge of the mechanics involved in reading books. Their style also slightly resembles the child centered book reading style identified in the Hammer et al. (2005) research, but is somewhat different in that they did not surrender control of the book reading interaction to their children. They quickly launched into the activity, and employed a series of questions to capture and sustain the children's attention.

Our third finding suggests that African American children reared in middle class homes have print rich experiences and frequently engage in reading interactions and reading activities with their mothers and other family members. There were no differences in the home reading environments of children whose mothers employed the diverse book reading styles. It may be the case that home book reading environments are created to sustain and support the book literacy of all members of the families, as opposed to individual children. Furthermore it might be that differences in the home literacy environment emerge when children enter a formal academic setting.

Clearly there are limitations with our research. The small sample size limits the generalizability of our findings and as such the findings must be interpreted with some degree of caution. Thus any future research must consider increasing the sample size when addressing the following next steps.

There are several important next steps in this line of research. First, future research in this area must take into account the nature of the book reading materials. In contrast to the previous research on shared book reading and African American mothers and their children, we observed mothers reading books to their children consisting of African American characters and storylines. No studies to date have employed such a methodology. However, there is a current focus in U. S. preschool classrooms to introduce African American families to books that depict the lives of African American families and children. One notably example of this effort comes from the recent work of McNair (2014) who developed a family literacy program for an economically diverse group of African American parents and their children. The goals of the program were to introduce these families to books written about African American children, and to provide them with suggestions on ways to create a stimulating home reading environment. According to McNair, the follow up interviews with the parents revealed that many of them reported being unaware of books written with African American children and families as central characters; some stated that as a result of the program they increased their reading time with their children; several indicated that they were sharing their knowledge of African American children's books with other parents and a few reported purchasing additional books with African American children and families as central characters. McNair concluded that in order for African American children to develop as successful readers it is important that African American children "see images" of themselves reflected in literature. Nyhout and O'Neil (2013) underscore this point and state that studies investigating shared book reading interactions "overlook the important role the book itself may play in the interaction and the role the book may play in the preschoolers' engagement in a shared book reading activity" (p. 2).

Subsequent research continuing along this line of study, could explore the influence of text content (i.e., books containing African American children and families as central characters vs. African American children and families absent from text) on maternal book reading strategies and book reading styles and the preschoolers' engagement in the book reading activity.

We also recommend that future investigations employ a microgenetic design (Siegler and Crowley, 1991). It may be the case that maternal book reading styles and strategies change along with book familiarity. In addition, there may be parallel changes which occur in the home book reading environment, that are best captured by a microgenetic design. Lastly, it is important to assess the children's contribution to the book reading interaction as their contribution and participation may change in tandem to maternal behavior.

In conclusion, the findings from this pilot study point toward the need for continued investigation into the book reading interactions of African American mothers and their children from diverse educational and income backgrounds. Based on this work, we have identified stylistic differences in their book reading behavior and captured at some level their children's engagement the book reading activity.

#### **REFERENCES**

Head Start children and their mothers. *J. Early Child. Lit.* 5, 195–227. doi: 10.1177/1468798405058683

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

*Received: 27 November 2013; accepted: 16 May 2014; published online: 04 June 2014. Citation: Harris YR and Rothstein SE (2014) Exploring story grammar structure in the book reading interactions of African American mothers and their preschool children: a pilot investigation. Front. Psychol. 5:545. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00545*

*This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.*

*Copyright © 2014 Harris and Rothstein. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.*

## Japanese mothers' utterances about agents and actions during joint picture-book reading

### *Toshiki Murase\**

Faculty of Law and Literature, Shimane University, Matsue, Japan

#### *Edited by:*

Jessica S. Horst, University of Sussex, UK

#### *Reviewed by:*

Danuta Bukatko, College of the Holy Cross, USA Wolfgang Friedlmeier, Grand Valley State University, USA

#### *\*Correspondence:*

Toshiki Murase, Faculty of Law and Literature, Shimane University, 1060 Nishikawatsu-cho, Matsue, Shimane 690-8504, Japan

e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
This study extended the research on the scaffolding provided by mothers while reading picture books with their children from a focus on conversational styles related to labeling to a focus on those related to agents and actions to clarify the process by which language develops from the one-word to the syntactic stage. We clarified whether mothers decreased the degree of scaffolding in their initiation of conversations, in the responses to their children's utterances, and in the choice of referential ranges of their utterances. We also investigated whether maternal conversational styles contributed to the development of their children's vocabularies. Eighteen pairs of Japanese mothers and their children were longitudinally observed when the children were 20 and 27 months of age. The pairs were given a picture book depicting 24 animals engaged in everyday behavior. The mothers shifted their approach in the initiation of conversation from providing to requesting information as a function of their children's age. The proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking responses was positively correlated with the size of their children's productive vocabulary. In terms of referential choices, mothers broadened the range of their references as their children aged. In terms of the contribution of maternal conversational styles to children's vocabulary development, the use of a maternal elaborative information-seeking style when the children were 20 months of age predicted the size of the children's productive vocabulary at 27 months. These results indicate that mothers decrease the degree of scaffolding by introducing more complex information into the conversations and transferring the role of actively producing information to their children by requesting information as their children develop. The results also indicate that these conversational styles promote the development of children's vocabularies during the transition from the one-word to the syntactic stage.

#### **Keywords: scaffolding, referential choice, information seeking, elaboration, mother–child communication, toddlers, picture-book reading, Japanese**

## **INTRODUCTION**

During the second year of life, children experience remarkable linguistic development, rapidly increasing their vocabulary and beginning to produce word combinations. The role of hearing others' language in this development has been investigated, and picture-book reading is among the activities that have been suggested to promote children's language development (Fletcher and Reese, 2005). For example, Whitehurst and colleagues demonstrated the effects of dialogic reading on vocabulary development (Arnold and Whitehurst, 1994).

Speech by caregivers during joint picture-book reading has been shown to support children's language development. In this context, caregivers demonstrated greater lexical diversity, syntactical complexity, and more frequent topic-continuing responses (Hoff-Ginsberg, 1991) and focused more on labeling than they did in other situations (Tardif et al., 1999; Choi, 2000). Additionally, conversations between caregivers and children were characterized by attempts to attract the attention of the other party, requests for information, labeling, and feedback (Ninio and Bruner, 1978; DeLoache and DeMendoza, 1987).

Most studies of conversations between caregivers and toddlers have used picture books dominated by pictures of individual items (DeLoache and DeMendoza, 1987; Tardif et al., 1999; Murase et al., 2005; Chan et al., 2009) and have focused on conversations about object names. To date, few studies have analyzed more complex conversations between caregivers and toddlers that move beyond labeling. The bias favoring conversations about object names rests on the dominance of object names, especially among English-speaking children, during their first stage of vocabulary acquisition. However, they show a slow linear increase in their use of verbs and other predicates, with the greatest gains occurring when their vocabulary consists of 100–400 words (Bates et al., 1994). Japanese children share this tendency, although nouns are less predominant than among their Englishspeaking counterparts (Ogura, 1999). We need to extend our knowledge about mother–child conversations from a narrow focus on object names to a more expansive focus on utterances about the actions of agents. The present study used a picture book that included a series of scenes of an animal performing an action. We analyzed the utterances about agents and actions

offered by caregivers in the service of clarifying the process by which language develops from the single-word to the syntactic stage.

Bruner and colleagues proposed that caregivers provide language assistance to their children and mentioned scaffolding as one of the strategies employed in this process. Scaffolding consists of the structure provided by caregivers for those aspects of the task at hand that are beyond children's capacity (Wood et al., 1976; Bruner, 1981). They also identified raising the ante as another strategy in this domain. This strategy entails caregivers' efforts to find ways of challenging children to incorporate a task they have already mastered into a more complex routine for achieving a more remote end. As children grow older, caregivers reduce the degree of scaffolding and transfer the role to the children themselves with the expectation that the children will be autonomous participants in conversations (Wood et al., 1976; Bruner, 1981).

Wood et al. (1976) identified six processes involved in scaffolding: recruitment, reduction in degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, marking critical features, frustration control, and demonstration. We focus on reduction in degrees of freedom, direction maintenance, and demonstration in the present study. Reducing the degrees of freedom entails systematically simplifying the task by reducing the number of constituent acts required to reach a solution. Maintaining direction means that caregivers keep children focused on the pursuit of a particular goal. Demonstration involves the idealization by caregivers of the task in question, including completing or expanding on an action executed by their children, with the expectation that the children will then imitate the new version.

We investigated the scaffolding provided by caregivers in conversations before and after the performance of conversational elements by children. Our first research question relates to the degree to which caregivers provide scaffolding at the beginning of a conversation, before children produce utterances about agents and actions. From the perspective of scaffolding, caregivers' requests for information provide less scaffolding than does their provision of information. Requests for information provide children with a cue but not concrete information; this stands in contrast to the practice of providing concrete information in the form of a full model. In this regard, requesting information can be seen as requiring that the children control more degrees of freedom compared with providing information. Previous research has shown that as children increased in age, caregivers increased the frequency with which they initiated conversational episodes with requests for information (DeLoache and DeMendoza, 1987; Murase et al., 1998) and increased the frequency with which they requested information in general (Bornstein et al., 1992; Fernald and Morikawa, 1993). Unlike previous studies that investigated all requests for information, we differentiated caregivers' requests for information about agents from those for information about actions, and investigated whether caregivers initiated a larger proportion of both types of conversations by requesting information and a smaller proportion by providing information as a function of the increase in the children's age.

Our second research question related to the degree to which caregivers provided scaffolding in their responses after children

provided information about agents and actions. Elaboration, which involves adding new information, can be seen as providing less scaffolding and raising the ante because it extends the children's utterances with the expectation that they will incorporate the new information into a more complex conversation. Previous studies have found that caregivers raise the ante in response to children's utterances as a function of children's age or linguistic ability and that maternal elaboration was more strongly related to children's linguistic ability than to their age (Ninio and Bruner, 1978; Murase et al., 2005). Thus, we hypothesized that the proportion of elaborative responses by caregivers would increase as children grew older.

In contrast, other-repetition involves repeating information provided by the other party in a dyadic interaction. Although other-repetition is used for various instructional and communication purposes, such as correction, acknowledging receipt of information, asking for clarification, and asking for confirmation (Demetras et al., 1986; Otomo, 2001; Huang, 2011), other-repetition can be interpreted as providing scaffolding. First, maternal other-repetition can serve as demonstration in the scaffolding process. Mothers may imitate children's attempts at information giving in an idealized form with the expectation that children will then imitate them. Second, maternal other-repetition can maintain the trajectory of the process. Mothers have the role of keeping younger children focused on the pursuit of a particular goal. In conversations, mothers may encourage children to continue a coherent dialog about a theme by explicitly repeating their children's utterances. Thus, we hypothesized that the proportion of other-repetition responses by caregivers would decrease as children grew older.

Additionally, we also investigated the extent of the information introduced by caregivers into conversations, the third aspect of scaffolding, which involves the issue of referential choice. Setting a limit on referential choices can act as a kind of scaffolding because caregivers reduce the degrees of freedom available to their children when referring to the scene.

Individuals in different cultures attend to different aspects of the same scene. Indeed, cross-cultural studies have found that East Asians are more attentive than are North Americans to contextual and relational information and that North Americans are more attentive than are East Asians to individual objects (Masuda and Nisbett, 2001; Masuda et al., 2008; Kuwabara et al., 2011; Kuwabara and Smith, 2012). Cross-linguistic studies of vocabulary development have revealed that Mandarin- and Korean-speaking children are less biased in favor of nouns than are English-speaking children and that Mandarin- and Korean-speaking caregivers use fewer nouns and more verbs in speaking to their children than do their English-speaking counterparts (Choi and Gopnik, 1995; Tardif, 1996; Tardif et al., 1997; Kim et al., 2000). A few studies have suggested that Japanese-speaking children are also less biased in favor of nouns than are English-speaking children (Ogura, 1999; Ogura et al., 2006). The results of these studies indicate that individuals choose the targets of their attention in a given scene, for example, an agent or action, in culturally specific ways.

Japanese is a pro-drop language, which allows the optional omission of either agent or object arguments (Guerriero et al., 2006). For example Japanese allows, *Neko ga miruku o nondeiru* (A cat is drinking milk), *Miruku o nondeiru* (is drinking milk), *Neko ga nondeiru* (A cat is drinking), and *Nondeiru* (Drinking) for the expression of *A cat is drinking milk*. This means that Japanese speakers choose which elements to include in their description of a scene.

According to the foregoing discussion, Japanese caregivers make two kinds of choices about what to refer to in a scene: one involves the aspects to which they will attend, and the other involves the elements to which they will verbally refer. This study investigated how Japanese caregivers change their verbal referential choices in utterances directed at their children during joint picture-book reading. Previous studies about referential choice have focused on pragmatic explanations. For example, caregivers use more non-lexical than lexical forms in reference to given information (Guerriero et al., 2006), and they tend to mention unexpected more than usual objects (Sethuraman and Smith, 2010). However, changes in the range of references by caregivers have not been clarified.

Working from the perspectives of scaffolding and raising the ante, we hypothesized that caregivers would narrow their references to specific elements within a scene when communicating with younger children, whereas they would broaden this range as children got older. Specifically, we predicted that caregivers would refer only to the agents or the actions in a scene more frequently when communicating with younger than with older children. In contrast, we predicted that caregivers would refer to both the agents and the actions in a scene more frequently when communicating with older than with younger children.

As this study used a longitudinal design, our fourth research question addressed the effects of maternal conversational style on children's vocabulary development. Previous studies have found that maternal responsiveness (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001; Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein, 2002) and maternal lexical richness (Bornstein et al., 1998; Hoff and Naigles, 2002) had positive effects on children's vocabulary development. The present study investigated the effects of the styles used by mothers to initiate conversations about agents and actions, their approaches to responding to children's information-giving utterances about agents and actions, and the effects of their referential choices about information about agents and actions on their children's vocabulary development.

In summary, this study investigated four issues. First, we clarified the degree of scaffolding provided by caregivers when initiating conversations with their children by providing or requesting information about agents and actions. We hypothesized that the proportion of conversations initiated by caregivers about both agents and actions by providing information would decrease and the proportion initiated by seeking information would increase as the children's age increased (hypothesis 1). Second, we determined the degree of scaffolding provided by caregivers in their responses to their children's provision of information about agents and actions. We hypothesized that in response to information provided by their children caregivers would engage in more elaboration and less other-repetition as the age of their children increased (hypothesis 2). Third, we clarified changes in caregivers' referential choices. We hypothesized that caregivers reduce references

to agents or actions alone and increase references to both agents and actions as children age (hypothesis 3). Fourth, we investigated the effects of maternal conversational styles at an earlier time on the size of children's productive vocabulary at a later time, controlling for children's productive vocabulary size at the earlier time.

## **MATERIALS AND METHODS**

#### **PARTICIPANTS**

Eighteen pairs of Japanese mothers and their children (8 boys and 10 girls) were observed when the children were 20 (range: 20.0– 20.13, mean: 20.05) and 27 (range: 26.29–27.17, mean: 27.08) months of age. Based on the norms of the Japanese MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (JCDI), which show that the median size of the productive vocabulary size of 20-month-old boys is 63 and that that of 20-month-old girls is 95, we studied children of this age because they have a substantial productive vocabulary (Watamaki and Ogura, 2004). Moreover, Japanese children exhibit a growth spurt in the size of their vocabulary at an average of 20 months of age (Kobayashi et al., 2013). We considered 27-month-old children to be in the syntactic stage based on data about maximum sentence length and the age at which they begin to combine words. According to JCDI norms (Watamaki and Ogura, 2004), more than 90% of 27-month-old Japanese children had started to combine words, and the median maximum sentence length was 4.27 words among 27-month-old boys and 5.78 words among 27-month-old girls. Seven children were first born, seven were second born, and four were born third or later in their families. Fourteen children were cared for by their mothers at home, and four children were cared for at day nurseries during the day.

## **PROCEDURE**

Each mother–child pair visited the playroom of the university when the child was 20 and 27 months of age. The book-reading session lasted 7 min to enable the young children to maintain their attention on the book. The experimenter left the room during the reading and then returned and stopped the session after 7 min even if the participants had not finished looking at all the pictures to minimize the children's frustration. As this study is a part of a project examining mother–child interaction, a 7-min play session simulating a dressing situation preceded and another 7-min play session simulating a cooking situation followed the book-reading session. The mothers also completed questionnaires regarding their children's productive vocabulary. When their children were 20 months of age, these questionnaires addressed whether and how their children produced a word for 82 familiar items and whether and how their children produced a word in 62 situations. The 82 familiar items included animals (e.g., dog), foods and beverages (e.g., banana), clothing (e.g., shirt), small household items (e.g., spoon), and places (e.g., bathroom). The 62 situations included interactions (e.g., giving something to a family member), requests (e.g., asking to be picked up), routine events (e.g., getting up in the morning), experiences (e.g., eating a favorite food), and actions (e.g., sitting on a chair). When their children were 27 months of age, the questionnaires asked the questions about 112 familiar items and 76 situations. The 112 familiar items

included the 82 used at 20 months as well as several additional items (e.g., pigeon, pineapple). The 76 situations included the 62 used at 20 months as well as several additional situations (e.g., asking about why certain actions were taken and correcting the verbal expressions of others). These instruments were used to assess the size of the children's productive vocabulary. We assessed children's productive vocabulary size by counting the different word types reported by mothers in response to both familiar items and situations.

## **MATERIALS AND CODING**

#### *Materials*

Each pair received a wordless picture book created for this research that depicted 24 animals engaged in ordinary behaviors (e.g., a horse eating bread, a lion playing with blocks; **Figure 1**).

#### *Utterances for analysis*

We analyzed utterances during episodes in which the mother and child jointly looked at the picture book. We defined episodes in reference to the reading cycle (Ninio and Bruner, 1978). The onset of an episode was recorded when (a) the book was open to a picture within 50 cm from both the child and mother and (b) the child or mother was pointing, gesturing, or vocalizing in some fashion that was directed to the content of the book. The offset of an episode was recorded when any of the following occurred: (a) the book was closed, (b) a new picture was introduced, or (c) either the child's or the mother's attention was withdrawn from the picture for more than 5 s. An utterance was defined as an informational unit that conveyed an idea. We divided speech into utterances based on syntactical information and supplemented this with observations of pauses and prosodic information when necessary to identify the endpoints of utterances.

#### *Coding of individual utterances by mothers*

Utterances including the names of animals appearing in a picture in the book were coded as instances of giving information about agents. We included not only conventional naming using nouns but also conventional onomatopoeias in this category because onomatopoeias are often used as labels for animals

during conversations between Japanese mothers and children (e.g., *wanwan* [woof-woof] and *inu* [dog] were both coded as giving information about agents). Utterances with information about the actions performed by the animals in a picture were coded as giving information about actions. We included not only conventional verbs but also conventional onomatopoeias in this category because onomatopoeias are also often used to express actions in conversations between Japanese mothers and children (e.g., both *gokungokun* [onomatopoeia for drinking] and *nonderu* [drinking] were coded as giving information about actions).

Utterances requesting the names of animals appearing in a picture in the book were coded as seeking information about agents (e.g., *Kore dare?* [Who is he?]). Utterances requesting information about actions depicted in a picture were coded as seeking information about actions (e.g., *Nani shiteru?* [What is he doing?]). Ambiguous utterances requesting information (e.g., *Kore wa?* [And this?]) were excluded from both categories.

The above categories were multiply coded. For example, statements by mothers such as *An elephant is washing his body* were coded as providing information about agents and actions, and utterances such as *What is the lion doing?* were coded as requests for information about actions and providing information about agents.

#### *Coding of individual utterances by children*

Utterances in which children provided information about agents and actions were coded using the same criteria as those used for mothers. Information requests issued by children were not differentiated according to whether their focus was on agents or on actions.

#### *Coding of conversation initiation*

The style of initiating conversations about agents and actions in response to each picture was coded in terms of three categories: maternal initiation by information giving, maternal initiation by information seeking, and children's initiation. In terms of information about agents, maternal initiation by information giving was coded when mothers initiated a conversation about agents with information giving preceding information seeking (e.g., mother said, *"He is a dog*," and then child said*,* "*Dog*"). Maternal initiation by information seeking was coded when mothers initiated a conversation about agents with information seeking preceding information giving (e.g., mother said, "*Who is he? He is a dog*," and then the child said, "*Dog*.").  We coded data on the initiation of conversations about actions in the same way as we coded data on the initiation of conversations about agents.

#### *Coding of mothers' responses to children's provision of information*

Mothers' utterances in the first and second turns following utterances in which children provided information about agents and actions were coded as "elaborative information giving," "elaborative information seeking," or "other-repetition." We defined elaboration as adding new information during conversations. Recent studies have shown that different styles of elaboration should be differentiated from one another (Fivush et al., 2006; Melzi et al., 2011), and we distinguished two types of elaboration: giving and seeking elaborative information. Both types can be viewed as ways to raise the ante as they introduce more complex information into conversations. However, requesting elaborative information provides less scaffolding than does offering elaborative information because the former involves questions rather than the provision of concrete information. Elaborative information giving was defined as the provision of information that had not been produced by the children during the episode in question. For example, a code of elaborative information giving was given when a mother said, "*He is washing his body*" in response to her child's saying, "*Elephant*," but this code was not given when a mother responded to the same utterance with, "*He is an elephant*." Elaborative information seeking was defined as a request for information that had not been previously produced by the children during the episode in question.  Other-repetition was defined as information provided by mothers that repeated the information provided by children in the last turn. For example, a code of other-repetition was given when a mother said, "*He is a lion*" after her child said, "*Lion*," but this code was not given when a mother said, "*He is an animal*" following her child's utterance of "*Lion.*" These three categories were multiply coded. For example, codes of other-repetition and elaborative information giving were given when a mother said, "*The elephant is washing his body*" after her child said, "*Elephant*" because the utterance both repeated information provided by the child and offered new information.

#### *Inter-coder reliability*

Two coders independently coded all utterances. The *kappa* values representing the reliability of maternal information giving about agents and actions and maternal requests for information about agents and actions were 0.98, 0.89, 0.91, and 0.95, respectively. The *kappa* values for children's information giving about agents and actions and for children's requests for information were 0.97, 0.87, and 0.84, respectively. Final coding was determined by discussions between the two coders.

#### **ASSESSMENT OF CHILDREN'S PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY**

We assessed the children's productive vocabulary at 20 and 27 months of age according to two criteria. The first criterion was the number of different word types produced by the children during a 7-min book-reading session and two 7-min play sessions. The second criterion was the number of different word types reported by mothers on the questionnaires. The two criteria were strongly correlated [*r*(16) = 0.80 at 20 months, *r*(16) = 0.83 at 27 months], and children showed stability in their word productivity. The productive vocabulary sizes estimated via observations of the 21-min sessions conducted at 20 and 27 months of age were strongly correlated [*r*(16) = 0.74], and the productive vocabulary sizes estimated by mothers at these two stages were also strongly correlated [*r*(16) = 0.88].

## **RESULTS**

The mean numbers of pictures referenced by mothers and children and the mean numbers of utterances by mothers and children per picture are presented in **Table 1**. A repeated-measures ANOVA on the number of pictures referenced by mothers and children revealed a main effect of children's age. More pictures were referenced by mothers and children when the children were 27 months of age than when they were younger, *F*(1,17) = 8.35, *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.05, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.33. The numbers of pictures referenced when children were 20 and 27 months were consistent [*r*(16) = 0.56, *p* < 0.05].

Repeated-measures ANOVAs on the number of utterances by mothers and by children per picture revealed a main effect of children's age on children's utterances, *F*(1,17) = 18.41, *p* <0.001, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.84, and a marginal main effect of children's age on maternal utterances, *<sup>F</sup>*(1,17) <sup>=</sup> 3.09, *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.10, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.15. Both mothers and children increased the number of utterances per picture as children developed from 20 to 27 months. The number of maternal [*r*(16) = 0.41, *p* <0.10] and child [*r*(16) = 0.44, *p* <0.10) utterances per pictures were moderately consistent between 20 and 27 months of age.

#### **INITIATION OF CONVERSATIONS BETWEEN MOTHERS AND CHILDREN (HYPOTHESIS 1)**

The following analysis examines the results of the repeatedmeasures ANCOVAs treating children's age as an independent variable and children's observed productive vocabulary size at 20 months as a covariate. We also treated the productive vocabulary size reported by mothers at 20 months as a covariate. When the second analysis produced essentially the same results as the first, we do not report the second analysis. When the second analysis produced results that differed from the first, we report the second results after the first.

The three ways of initiating conversations (maternal information giving, maternal information seeking, and children's initiation) were analyzed separately for the conversation for both agents and actions. Comparisons were calculated by dividing the number of pictures in response to which mothers and children initiated a conversation about agents (actions) in each of these ways by the total number of pictures in response to which mothers and children referred to agents (actions). **Table 2** presents the mean proportions of the three styles of initiating conversations about agents and actions.

In terms of the initiation of conversations about agents, a series of ANCOVAs revealed main effects of children's age on the proportion of utterances in which mothers provided information

**Table 1 | Mean numbers of pictures referenced and mean number of utterances per picture (SDs in parentheses).**

**Table 2 | Mean proportions of initiation types (SDs in parentheses).**

and children initiated conversations, *F*(1,16) = 7.38, *p* <0.05, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup>0.32; *<sup>F</sup>*(1,16)=8.95, *<sup>p</sup>*<0.01, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup>0.36, but no main effect of children's age on the proportion of maternal information-seeking utterances was observed. As the children grew older, the mothers initiated a smaller proportion of the conversations by providing information, and the children initiated a larger proportion of the conversations.

In terms of the initiation of conversations about actions, a series of ANCOVAs showed main effects of children's age on the proportion of maternal information-giving and maternal information-seeking utterances, *F*(1,16) = 16.76, *p* <0.001, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.51; *<sup>F</sup>*(1,16) <sup>=</sup> 14.88, *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.001, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.48, but no main effect of children's age on the proportion of conversations initiated by children was observed. Mothers initiated a smaller proportion of conversations about actions by information giving and initiated a larger proportion by information seeking as their children aged from 20 to 27 months.

When we used the productive vocabulary size reported by mothers at 20 months as a covariate, the results of the ANCO-VAs showed that the proportion of child-initiated utterances about agents did not significantly change as a function of their age.

#### **MATERNAL RESPONSES TO CHILDREN'S PROVISION OF INFORMATION (HYPOTHESIS 2)**

*Responses to children's information-giving utterances about agents* The two turns by mothers following their children's first information-giving utterance about agents for each picture were analyzed. We selected only the first information-giving utterance about agents for each picture because the conversational sequence leading to later information-giving utterances made by the children was probably affected by the first such utterance regarding the picture. Data from only those mother–child pairs in which the child produced information about agents at both 20 and 27 months of age were included in this analysis. Fourteen pairs met this criterion (The mean number of episodes analyzed at 20 and 27 months were 6.1 and 12.3, respectively). Proportions were computed by dividing the number of pictures in response to which mothers produced elaborative information-giving, elaborative information-seeking, and other-repetition utterances following children's information-giving utterances about agents by the number of pictures in response to which children produced information-giving utterances about agents. A series of ANCOVAs showed a main effect of children's age on the proportion of maternal other-repetition utterances, *F*(1,12) = 25.20, *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.001, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.68 (*<sup>M</sup>* <sup>=</sup> 0.94, SD <sup>=</sup> 0.09 for the proportion at 20 months; *M* = 0.62, SD = 0.23 for the proportion at 27 months; *M* = 5.43, SD = 4.94 for the number of pictures at 20 months; *M* = 8.50, SD = 4.03 for the number of pictures at 27 months), but no main effect of children's age on the proportion of maternal elaborative information-giving (*M* = 0.34, SD = 0.27 for the proportion at 20 months; *M* = 0.17, SD = 0.15 for the proportion at 27 months; *M* = 2.29, SD = 2.81 for the number of pictures at 20 months; *M* = 2.43, SD = 2.28 for the number of pictures at 27 months) and elaborative information-seeking (*M* = 0.17, SD = 0.18 for the proportion at 20 months; *M* = 0.33, SD = 0.23 for the proportion at 27 months; *M* = 1.36, SD = 1.82 for the number of pictures at 20 months; *M* = 4.21, SD = 2.75 for the number of pictures at 27 months) utterances was observed. The proportion of maternal otherrepetition responses to children's information-giving utterances about agents decreased as the children aged from 20 to 27 months (**Figure 2**).

Murase et al. (2005) found that the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances was more strongly correlated with children's productive vocabulary size than with children's age. Therefore, we analyzed the correlation between maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances and children's productive vocabulary size at 20 and 27 months. A significant positive relationship was found between the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances and children's reported productive vocabulary size when children were 20 months of age [*r*(12) = 0.62, *p* < 0.05], but the relationship between the proportion of elaborative information-seeking utterances and children's observed productive vocabulary size was weaker [*r*(12) = 0.38, n.s.]. Marginally significant positive relationships were found between the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances and the size of both the reported [*r*(16) = 0.42, *p* < 0.10] and the observed [*r*(16) = 0.43, *p* < 0.10] productive vocabularies when children were 27 months of age. These results show moderately positive relationships between maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances and the size of children's productive vocabulary.

**information-giving utterances about agents.**

#### *Responses to children's information-giving utterances about actions*

The two turns by mothers following their child's first informationgiving utterance about actions were analyzed for each picture. We selected only the first information-giving utterance about actions produced by the child for the same reason that we followed this strategy in our analysis of responses to children's information-giving utterances about agents. Only those pairs in which the child offered information about actions at both 20 and 27 months of age were included in this analysis. Data from 10 pairs were used in this analysis (The mean numbers of episodes analyzed at 20 and 27 months were 1.8 and 5.8, respectively). Proportions were computed by dividing the number of pictures in response to which mothers produced elaborative information-giving, elaborative information-seeking, and other-repetition utterances following children's informationgiving utterances about actions by the number of pictures in response to which children produced information-giving utterances about actions. A series of ANCOVAs revealed no significant main effect of the proportions of the three dependent variables (**Figure 3**).

#### **RANGE OF REFERENCES IN RESPONSE TO PICTURES (HYPOTHESIS 3)**

We categorized the range of references provided by mothers in response to each picture into four types: references to both agents and actions, references to agents only, references to actions only, and references to neither agents nor actions. We categorized the series of utterances in response to pictures as references to agents and actions when mothers provided at least one piece of information about both agents and actions. We categorized responses as references to agents only when mothers offered information about agents but not about actions, even if other information, such as arguments, was provided. We categorized responses as references to actions only when mothers offered information about actions but not about agents, even if other information was provided. We categorized responses as references to neither agents nor actions when mothers did not provide information about agents or actions.

A series of ANCOVAs on the proportions of the four categories (agents and actions, agents only, actions only, and neither agents nor actions) revealed a main effect of children's age on maternal actions-only responses, *<sup>F</sup>*(1,16) <sup>=</sup> 9.29, *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.01, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.37. The proportion of mothers' actions-only responses decreased between 20 and 27 months of age (*M* = 0.19, SD = 0.14 at 20 months; *M* = 0.10, SD = 0.10 at 27 months). We found no main effects of children's age on the other three responses (**Figure 4**).

Mothers changed their referential style from information giving to information seeking as their children got older. Moreover, mothers transferred the role of information giving to their children as the children grew older. We included information giving by mothers, information seeking by mothers, and information giving by children in our analyses of the referential style with which mothers and children responded to each picture. A series of ANCOVAs on the proportions of the four categories (agents and actions, agents only, actions only, and neither agents nor actions) again revealed a main effect of children's age on actions-only responses, *F*(1,16) = 6.28, *p* < 0.05, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.28. The proportion of references to only actions decreased between 20 and 27 months of age (*M* = 0.16, SD = 0.15 at 20 months; *M* = 0.08, SD = 0.11 at 27 months). Additionally, we also found a marginal main effect of children's age on responses that included references to both agents and actions, *<sup>F</sup>*(1,16) <sup>=</sup> 3.48, *<sup>p</sup>* <sup>&</sup>lt; 0.10, <sup>η</sup><sup>2</sup> <sup>=</sup> 0.18. The proportion of references to agents and actions increased between 20 and 27 months of age (*M* = 0.41, SD = 0.22 at 20 months; *M* = 0.55, SD = 0.22 at 27 months, **Figure 5**). When we used the productive vocabulary size reported by mothers at 20 months, the ANCOVA on references to agents and actions revealed no main effect of children's age.

These results show mothers decreased actions-only references and increased agents-and-actions references as their children got older, although the results for agents-and-actions references are not robust. The results show that mothers did not significantly change the proportion of agents-only references.

#### **EFFECTS OF MATERNAL CONVERSATIONAL STYLES WHEN CHILDREN WERE 20 MONTHS OF AGE ON CHILDREN'S PRODUCTIVE VOCABULARY SIZE AT 27 MONTHS**

We first examined the zero-order correlations between maternal conversational styles when children were 20 months of age and children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months.

referential styles (proportions of references to both agents and actions, to agents only, and to actions only). These associations are presented in **Table 3**. We found a significant positive zero-order relationship between maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's provision of information about agents at 20 months of age and children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months [*r*(12) = 0.61, *p* < 0.05]; this association was marginally significant even when we controlled for children's observed productive vocabulary size at 20 months [*r*(11) = 0.53, *p* < 0.10].

Finally, the proportion of maternal elaborative informationseeking responses to children's provision of information about agents was entered into a hierarchical regression analysis, treating children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months as the outcome variable. Children's observed productive vocabulary size at 20 months was entered first, followed by the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's provision of information about agents at 20 months. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis are presented in **Table 4**. Maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's provision of information about agents at 20 months was a marginally significant predictor of children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months. No other maternal conversational style when children were 20 months of age was a significant predictor when entered in the second step. We also performed a hierarchical regression analysis, treating children's reported productive vocabulary size at 27 months as the outcome variable. We first entered children's reported productive vocabulary size at

**Table 3 | Zero-order and partial correlations between maternal conversational styles when children were 20 months of age and children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months.**

Children's observed productive vocabulary size at 20 months was partialed out in the analysis of partial correlation. \*p < 0.05, †p < 0.10.

We then partialed out the factor of children's observed productive vocabulary size at 20 months and examined the association between maternal conversational styles when their children were 20 months of age and children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months. We examined maternal conversational styles in terms of initiation styles (proportions of conversations about agents and actions initiated by maternal information seeking and information giving), response styles (proportions of maternal utterances involving elaborative information giving, elaborative information seeking, and other-repetition in response to children's provision of information about agents and actions), and

**Table 4 | Hierarchical regression analysis on the ability of maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's provision of information about agents at 20 months to predict children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months (***N* **= 14).**

\*p < 0.05, \*\*p < 0.01, †p <0.10.

20 months as the control factor and then entered the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking responses. The analysis indicated that maternal elaborative information seeking was not a significant predictor of children's productive vocabulary size at 27 months.

#### **DISCUSSION**

The present study revealed that mothers increased the degrees of freedom available to by their children as a function of their children's age in two ways. First, mothers broadened the range of their references by reducing the proportion of references to actions only and increasing the proportion to both agents and actions as their children aged. Second, mothers increased the proportion of conversations about actions that they initiated with information-seeking utterances as the age of their children increased. Maternal elaborative informationseeking responses to children's provision of information include utterances that broadened the range of reference and required that children provide information. Although the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's utterances providing information about agents did not significantly increase as children aged, the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances was moderately positively related to children's productive vocabulary size at both 20 and 27 months. These results indicate that mothers introduce more complex information into their conversations with their children and transfer the role of actively producing information during conversations to their children as their children develop.

Maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's provision of information about agents at 20 months was positively associated with children's observed productive vocabulary size at 27 months. This result suggests that maternal responses that elaborate on information provided by their children and require children to adopt an active role in producing information promote the development of children's vocabularies during the period from the one-word to the syntactic stage.

In addition to the aforementioned increase in the degrees of freedom, the present study revealed that mothers reduced the proportion of utterances designed to maintain their children's attention and provide models, the other aspects of scaffolding. Mothers reduced other-repetition in their responses to children's provision of information about agents as children developed. We discuss the individual maternal conversational styles in greater detail in the following sections.

#### **INITIATION OF CONVERSATION**

In terms of conversations about actions, mothers reduced initiation by information giving and increased initiation by information seeking from 20 to 27 months, as proposed by Hypothesis 1. Contrary to Hypothesis 1, mothers did not initiate a significantly larger proportion of conversations about agents by information seeking, although they did initiate a smaller proportion of such conversations by information giving during this interval.

The absence of an increase in the proportion of conversations about agents initiated by information seeking can be explained by the age range of the children in this study. The mothers of the 20-month-old children included in the present study initiated conversations about agents in more than 50% of the episodes on average, which exceeded the proportion of conversations about actions initiated by information seeking by mothers of 27-monthold children. Previous studies have shown that the proportion of conversations initiated by maternal information-seeking utterances while reading picture books about objects substantially increased during the first half of the second year of their children's life; however, the rate at which such utterances increased was reduced during the second half of the children's second year (DeLoache and DeMendoza, 1987; Murase et al., 1998). The mothers of 20-month-old children included in the present study reached the level at which they frequently initiated conversations about agents with information-seeking utterances.

Why do mothers frequently initiate conversations about agents by information seeking when their children are 20 months of age? The first reason for this is the earlier acquisition of words about agents than about actions. Children produce utterances about agents more frequently than about actions starting at 20 months of age. Another reason for this finding is the order of conversations. In general, conversations about agents precede those about actions. At the beginning of such conversations, mothers are likely to use rhetorical questions that take the form of information-seeking utterances in the absence of an expectation of a reply from the addressee (DeLoache and DeMendoza, 1987). When mothers start a conversational episode about a picture, they may use rhetorical questions for the purpose of attracting children's attention irrespective of whether the mothers expect an answer.

In summary, mothers shift their approach to initiating conversations from information giving to information seeking during the second year of their children's lives. This shift occurs first in conversations about agents and next in conversations about actions. It represents an increase in the degrees of freedom in the scaffolding process that are controlled by children (Wood et al., 1976).

#### **RESPONSES TO CHILDREN'S INFORMATION-GIVING UTTERANCES**

As hypothesized (hypothesis 2) mothers decreased otherrepetition responses to children's information-giving utterances about agents as their children aged from 20 to 27 months. This result is consistent with previous research (Murase et al., 1998). In general, previously established referents are more likely to be expressed in non-lexical (null or pronominal) forms than are newly introduced referents (Guerriero et al., 2006). In contrast to this principle, mothers of younger children may repeat referents that have been previously expressed by their children in an idealized form with the expectations that the children will imitate them and that the repetition will maintain their children's focus on the ongoing conversation. The results show that mothers reduced these types of scaffolding (i.e., demonstration and direction-maintenance) as their children aged.

However, contrary to hypothesis 2, mothers did not significantly change the proportion of elaborative information-seeking and elaborative information-giving utterances in response to children's information-giving utterances about agents as their children developed from 20 to 27 months. Elaborative information seeking can be viewed as providing less scaffolding and raising the ante because it adds new information to that provided by children and it asks children to produce information. Why did elaborative information-seeking responses not increase with children's age? Mothers may decide whether they require elaborative information from their children based on their children's ability to produce lexical utterances because maternal elaborative information-seeking responses are requests made after children provide information; this differs from requests for information that initiate conversations. In effect, the present study found a moderately positive relationship between the proportion of maternal elaborative information-seeking responses and children's productive vocabulary size. This finding is in accord with the fact that the increase in the elaborative information-seeking utterances by Japanese mothers in response to their children's labeling is more strongly related to their children's productive vocabulary size than to their general developmental level, as represented by their children's age (Murase et al., 2005).

Mothers' responses to information-giving utterances about actions made by children did not change with children's age. One reason that no such change was found could be the small number of information-giving utterances about actions produced by children. More data are required to reach conclusions about mothers' responses to this kind of utterance. Another reason for the absence of an association between these utterances and children's age involves the order in which the conversations proceeded. In response to many of the pictures, mothers and children started conversations by referring to the agents, and their references to actions came later. Mothers' responses to children's information-giving utterances about actions may have

been affected by the preceding conversations about agents, which may have masked changes in mothers' responses as children got older.

### **MOTHERS' REFERENTIAL CHOICES**

Mothers broadened the range of their references as their children developed from 20 to 27 months. As hypothesis 3 proposed, the proportion of references to actions only decreased with children's age. However, the proportion of references to both agents and actions did not significantly increase with children's age when we limited the analysis to mothers' information-giving utterances. When we considered the shift from providing to requesting information and the passing of the role of providing information from mother to child, we added information-seeking utterances by mothers and information-giving utterances by children to the category. We found that the proportion of references to agents and actions tended to increase as the children developed from 20 to 27 months, although this result was not robust.

Contrary to hypothesis 3, the proportion of references to agents only did not change with children's age. This can be explained by the dominance of agentic references in this situation. Japanese mothers are more oriented to nouns/naming than to verbs/activity during mother–child conversations while reading picture books (Ogura et al., 2006). When their children are 20 months of age, mothers refer to things that can interest or be comprehended or produced by their children irrespective of whether the referents are agents or actions. When children reach 27 months of age, mothers focus on agentic references, on the one hand, while broadening the range of references, on the other.

In summary, mothers tend to broaden the range of references as their children grow older, which can be viewed as raising the ante because mothers appear to introduce more complex conversations to their children. This can also be viewed as reducing the degree of scaffolding because mothers tend to encourage their older children to be in control of a wider range of information. However, mothers also shift their focus toward agentic references as their children develop, and the decrease in references to agents only may in part reflect this shift.

#### **CONTRIBUTION OF MATERNAL ELABORATIVE INFORMATION-SEEKING UTTERANCES TO CHILDREN'S VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT**

The hierarchical regression analysis showed that maternal elaborative information-seeking responses to children's informationgiving utterances about agents at 20 months of age marginally predicted increases in children's observed productive vocabulary size. Although not robust, this result suggests that maternal conversational style can contribute to children's language development as children transition from the one-word to the syntactic stage.

Maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances have three important characteristics. First, they extend the scope of conversations in that mothers use them to add new information. The results of the present study are consistent with findings that maternal lexical richness, which is exemplified by elaborative information-seeking utterances, exerts a positive effect on children's vocabulary development (Bornstein et al., 1998; Hoff and Naigles, 2002). Second, maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances act as requests for children to take an active role in the conversation by providing information. The results of the present study are consistent with findings that dialogic reading is positively related to children's language development in that it includes asking wh-questions and following children's answers with questions (Arnold and Whitehurst, 1994). Third, maternal elaborative information-seeking utterances are responsive in that they are contingent on and appropriately connected to children's utterances. The results of the present study are in accord with earlier research indicating that maternal responsiveness contributes to children's vocabulary development (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001; Tamis-LeMonda and Bornstein, 2002).

In summary, adding new information, requesting information, and being responsive may contribute to children's vocabulary development during the transition from the one-word to the syntactic stage.

#### **LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS**

The conclusions drawn from this study and their generalizability are limited by some aspects of the design. Although the 7-min observation period was substantial, only a modest number of information-giving utterances were provided by some children. Thus, the power of this research to analyze maternal responses to children's provision of information was limited. Additionally, we did not analyze information about arguments because too few relevant utterances were made.

The results regarding increased references to both agents and actions and the contribution of maternal elaborative informationseeking utterances to children's vocabulary development are not robust. Additional research is needed to confirm these results.

Conversations during reading other types of books (e.g., story books) need to be investigated because the types of utterances made by mothers change according to the kinds of picture that is viewed (Chan et al., 2009). It would also be interesting to examine conversations that occur while mothers and children are viewing animated scenes. Indeed, unlike the static scenes used in this study, animated scenes may elicit more utterances about actions from mothers and children during joint watching. Furthermore, conversations during joint picture-book reading are more focused on labeling than are conversations in other situations, such as playing with toys. It would be important to investigate whether mothers modify their utterances in other situations in a way that is similar to the patterns observed in the present study.

Japanese is a pro-drop language, and we need to investigate whether our findings about referential choice can be generalized to the speakers of other languages. For example, in English, the agents, actions, objects, and recipients are all explicitly mentioned. We need to examine whether English-speaking caregivers change the range of their references as a function of children's age.

Another interesting topic for future study would be crosscultural comparisons between East Asian and North American caregivers. Although information about differences in the attentional styles of East Asians and North Americans has been increasing (Masuda and Nisbett, 2001; Masuda et al., 2008), only a few studies have attempted to clarify the developmental processes underpinning cross-cultural differences (Chan et al., 2009). Thus, the comparisons of the referential choices made by Japanese and American caregivers need to be investigated from a cross-cultural perspective.

### **CONCLUSION**

This study determined that Japanese mothers decrease scaffolding and raise the ante by changing the balance between providing and requesting information and by broadening their range of references. This study also suggests that maternal elaborative information-seeking responses contribute to children's vocabulary development. Cross-cultural studies will clarify the universality and culture-specific aspects of these characteristics and elucidate the developmental processes underlying children's language development.

#### **ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**

This research was supported by a grant-in-aid for Scientific Research (C) (#088370125) from the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan. We thank So Usui for his valuable assistance in conducting this research and preparing this paper.

## **REFERENCES**

**Conflict of Interest Statement:** The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

#### *Received: 25 October 2013; paper pending published: 19 November 2013; accepted: 04 April 2014; published online: 08 May 2014.*

*Citation: Murase T (2014) Japanese mothers' utterances about agents and actions during joint picture-book reading. Front. Psychol. 5:357. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00357 This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.*

*Copyright © 2014 Murase. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.*

## Children's interactions with iPad books: research chapters still to be written

## *Natalia Kucirkova\**

*Department of Education, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK \*Correspondence<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
*Edited by: Carmel Houston-Price, University of Reading, UK*

#### *Reviewed by:*

*Graham Schafer, University of Reading, UK*

**Keywords: iPads, early literacy, shared book reading, new literacies, digital books**

Children's interactive e-books are novel literacy tools with interactive and multimodal representations of story contents and increased customizable features. The learning opportunities represented by these new affordances demand a thorough consideration of children's engagement, including the contextual and socio-cultural factors which influence the books' deployment in home and classroom settings. Currently, there is inconclusive evidence about how the affordances of interactive e-books support children's learning, with studies mostly limited to comparison studies with nondigital books and observational studies of children's immediate engagement. In both lines of research, the content of the stories, the overall context of interaction and the background of the interactants are neglected. This article makes recommendations for future research and highlights the value of iPads as a new medium enriching children's experiences but also challenging traditional research assumptions.

## **CHILDREN'S iPad BOOKS: AFFORDANCES AND DISTINCTIVE FEATURES**

Children's interactive e-books are touchmanipulative digital books which represent meanings in three modes (i.e., sound, text, and image) and offer several possibilities for interaction (e.g., main character moves when touched). They differ from paper-based books and from classic PC books according to several dimensions, summarized in **Table1**.

Children's interactive e-books can be downloaded on several devices such as smartphones and tables. Those downloaded on iPads can be of two kinds: those created by the users themselves using any of the "book-making apps" available in App store (e.g., My Story™, Our Story) or "iPad storybooks" which are ready-made and can be downloaded from the ibook store (e.g., Cinderella™, What is That?). In practice, book-making apps often accompany iPad storybooks or are even integrated into them (e.g., the Farmer's Lunch app by HarperCollins). In this piece, I focus on interactive e-books downloaded on iPads and subsume under the term "iPad books" books created with book-making iPad apps or those which are commercially available.

iPad books come with several activities (e.g., possibility for coloring the storybook pages) and customization or personalization options. The features which have not been available for children's books before are increased interactivity, multimodal story representation and unprecedented customizability of reading experience. Considering these novel features and the increased popularity and growing industry of children's iPad books (Costello, 2012), it seems important to research the books' potential for supporting children's learning and engagement with literacy.

### **RESEARCH TO DATE: ISSUES AND PROMISING AVENUES**

So far, research concerning children's iPad storybooks has focused on two approaches: observational studies nested in qualitative research and comparison studies which tend to adopt quantitative research design. In the former approach, researchers have documented children's engagement with a variety of iPad apps, including book-making (or story-making) apps in classrooms. For example, Hutchison et al. (2012) investigated how iPads support children's reading and responding to text in elementary classrooms. Several apps were investigated, including three book-making apps: iBooks, Strip Designer and Popplet. Teachers' reports and the researchers' observations indicated that iBooks were primarily used for independent reading in the classroom, while the Strip Designer and Popplet apps were used for children's creative story-composing. Both kinds of books seemed to engage and motivate children to practice new literacy skills, such as cooperation, creativity or self-revision. Similarly, Flewitt et al. (2012) have documented young children's engagement with various apps in a primary and pre-school classroom, including a book-making app called Our Story. Children were found to be meaningfully and creatively engaged with Our Story and the teachers positively commented on the app's potential to support children's digital literacy and inventiveness.

In another line of research, Parish-Morris et al. (2013) compared children's touch-sensitive electronic console books (comparable to iPad storybooks) and traditional books in relation to dialogic language and children's story comprehension. The authors observed 165 parent–child dyads and found that children's story comprehension was negatively influenced by the presence of electronic features in the electronic console books. Chiong et al. (2012) investigated the differences between basic e-books (i.e., digital books with minimal interactive and customization features) and enhanced

**Table 1 | Overview of affordances of three main reading tools for children.**

*\*E-books can be downloaded to various devices, including smartphones, Kindle and iPads.*

e-books, as read by 32 parents and their 3–6-year-old children. Chiong et al. analyzed their observational data along several dimensions, including physical and verbal engagement, story recall, as well as verbal labeling, or pointing in relation to specific story features. The findings showed that the enhanced interactivity of e-books negatively affected children's story recall but was advantageous for engaging children in the activity and prompting physical interaction.

Thus, it seems to be the case that in comparison studies, iPad books fare less well than traditional books, but when studied in their own right, iPad books are reported to engage children and to have positive effects different from simple digital books. However, in drawing these conclusions, it is important to recognize some persistent issues in research concerned with children's interactions with technology. Moreover, methodological inconsistences among the studies limit the insights into the research implications. This leaves many practitioners uncertain about how to best support children's interaction with the tools (Kucirkova, 2013). To help guide future research and development in this area, I suggest some theoretical and methodological considerations.

## **THEORETICAL POINTERS**

I argue that to empirically illustrate the novel affordances of iPad books, researchers need to follow theories which view digital texts as a new medium of communication, and new technologies as tools which afford novel learning spaces. Researchers who evaluate children's learning experiences need to consider traditional as well as new digital literacy skills which are opening out with new technologies. For the latter, children's ability to interpret digital images or to collaborate on a piece of text are relevant (Wolsey and Grisham, 2012). Such an approach resonates with the proponents of the New Literacies Framework, who associate new technologies with new definitions of literacy (Coiro et al., 2008). New Literacies Framework puts forward the idea that new technologies reshape the ways in which stories are presented and interpreted (Lankshear and Knobel, 2003) and that their mastering and understanding requires new literacy skills. Such a position builds upon previous theoretical work which views new forms of books as new literacy tools with unique affordances for meaning-making (Salomon, 1992). These views are supported by historical evidence outlined by Madej (2003) who reviewed the evolution of interactive features in digital texts and concluded that new digital texts are more than an extension or replacement of previous books. Even though there were various media accompanying books as early as in the 1980s (such as an audio tape or television show to enrich a paper-based story), there was a considerable shift of story presentation in the 1990s, with new technologies "reshaping stories" (Madej, 2003, p.15). Therefore, researchers interested in finding out how novel features of iPad books affect children's learning, need to adopt a theoretical framework which facilitates conceptualizing iPad books as unique, 21st century learning tools. This is closely linked to the need for adopting a detailed and innovative methodology to ascertain the books' value for children's learning.

## **METHODOLOGICAL POINTERS**

Some steps in adopting new methodological approaches to study children's iPad books have been already undertaken. For example, Falloon (2013) applied an innovative methodology to generate and analyse data from the use of iPads by eighteen 5-year-olds in a New Zealand preschool classroom. Faloon used the Display Recorder app with which he could record children's interaction from within the device, generating video files with detailed finger placement indication and good sound quality. This procedure allowed the researcher to collect data reflecting children's natural interaction and minimize observer-effect which often occurs from close observation or video recording. Moreover, a complex list of factors influencing children's engagement was obtained, including effects which reflect teachers' ability to adequately support the children, such as modeling the child's response or offering corrective and formative feedback (Falloon, 2013). Although a new analytical framework might pose difficulties for direct comparisons with findings from previous research with traditional paper-based books, it offers powerful opportunities for future design of iPad books, both in terms of their content and format features. It is likely that a thorough consideration of the nature of interactive features, designed with or without a pedagogic intention in mind, will help designers gather specific data on the process of children's engagement and establish possible areas of concern.

Existent qualitative methodologies offer another promising research avenue in this respect. Kucirkova et al. (2013) looked in detail at a parent-child interaction when reading a self-made book on iPad. A detailed multimodal interactional analysis approach allowed the authors to analyse the interaction along verbal and non-verbal interaction indices (Norris, 2004) and to distinguish between verbal and non-verbal communication and "embodied (gesture, gaze and language) and disembodied (e.g., a book, iPad, and picture) resources used for meaningmaking" (Kucirkova et al., 2013, p. 117). In addition to the analysis of communicative modes of the parent and child, Kucirkova et al. considered the communication modes of the audio-visual book, i.e., the sounds and images which were part of the story the mother and child viewed and interacted with during story-sharing. The study showed that parent-child sharing of the personal iPad book can give rise to a new interactional space, resembling the atmosphere of experiencing a piece of art. The study thus underscored the importance of future research to consider the possibility that iPad books can establish a new interaction context which needs to be studied with comprehensive and detailed methodologies.

In addition to methodological innovations and creative research approaches, future research agendas need to combine innovationwithsomewell-known,yetoften neglected, issues in technology research. In this respect, my recommendations for future research focus on three areas.

First, future research needs to consider children's engagement in light of factors related to interaction with technology. Notably, children's previous exposure to iPads, technological competency, gender and overall literacy skills are likely to play a role in children's engagement with iPad books (see Plowman, 1995).

Second, future research should involve an examination of the interlinked relationship between iPads' use and home and classroom literacy practices. It has been well established that the use of books is heavily influenced by the classroom practice preceding their introduction (Ertmer, 1999; Windschitl and Sahl, 2002) and that teachers' beliefs and instructional philosophy are often a more powerful determinant of technology use than the technology itself (Miller and Olson, 1994). It follows that for books presented in the form of digital apps or texts, teachers' classroom practice and their conception of the nature of children's interaction with books and technology are vital variables to be included in analyses. By the same token, parents' attitudes and beliefs about appropriate early literacy activities ought to be considered as a crucial element in future parent-child-iPad book investigations (see e.g., Bingham, 2007).

Finally, future research should study in detail the *content* of the iPad storybooks children engage with. In light of the wellestablished effects of different book contents on children's learning (e.g., Nyhout and O'Neill, 2013), it is important to enrich existing findings with a detailed examination of the variety of contents iPad books can accommodate, ranging from self-generated innovative storybooks through conventional alphabet and information books.

In conclusion, iPad books for children are a novel addition to the rich repertoire of children's books in the 21st century. A small but emerging literature exists which shows inconclusive evidence of the books' benefits for young children. In view of the current belief that new literacy activities ought to foster children's current *and* future literacy skills (Barone and Mallette, 2013), researchers need to be mindful of issues related to the evaluation of new and traditional literacy practices. Future research needs theoretically sound and methodologically innovative examinations of the ways in which iPad books add to children's literacy experiences.

## **REFERENCES**

close look at one parent–child interaction. *Literacy* 47, 115–122. doi: 10.1111/lit.12003

*Received: 24 September 2013; accepted: 12 December 2013; published online: 24 December 2013.*

*Citation: Kucirkova N (2013) Children's interactions with iPad books: research chapters still to be written. Front. Psychol. 4:995. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00995 This article was submitted to Developmental Psychology,*

*a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Copyright © 2013 Kucirkova. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative*

*Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.*

## Structured narrative retell instruction for young children from low socioeconomic backgrounds: a preliminary study of feasibility

## *Suzanne M. Adlof\*, Angela N. McLeod and Brianne Leftwich*

*Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, USA*

#### *Edited by:*

*Carmel Houston-Price, University of Reading, UK*

#### *Reviewed by:*

*Katharina Rohlfing, Bielefeld University, Germany Ruth Ford, Anglia Ruskin University, UK*

#### *\*Correspondence:*

*Suzanne M. Adlof, University of South Carolina, Williams Brice Nursing Building, 6th Floor, 1621 Greene St., Columbia, SC 29208, USA e-mail<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
Successful acquisition of literacy depends on adequate development of decoding skills as well as broader, meaning-related knowledge and skills for text comprehension. Children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds are often challenged in both domains, relative to peers who are not economically disadvantaged. The efficacy of code-focused instructional programs for at-risk preliterate children is well supported, but less evidence is available regarding interventions to improve broader language and comprehension skills. This preliminary study tested the feasibility of a new intervention, "structured narrative retell instruction" (SNRI), and explored its potential to enhance meaning-related knowledge and skills, including vocabulary, listening comprehension, and narrative skills, in pre-literate, low SES children. SNRI used authentic children's books to model comprehension processes, explicitly teach story grammar, and implicitly target microstructural aspects of narratives. Participants included 9 children with a mean age of 60 months, who were randomly assigned to SNRI or to code-focused literacy instruction (CFLI). Each group received 12, 40-min instructional sessions over 6 weeks. Pre- and post-tests were administered to assess vocabulary, listening comprehension, narrative macrostructure and narrative microstructure, as well as alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and concepts of print. The feasibility of SNRI was demonstrated by completion of the designed study, moderately high treatment fidelity, and qualitative feedback from interventionists. The SNRI group also made significant gains on 4 of the 7 meaning-related measures (*p <* 0*.*10). In comparison, the CFLI group made significant gains on 2 of 7 meaning-related measures. We conclude that SNRI is feasible and shows potential for improving language skills related to comprehension and that further research investigating its efficacy is warranted.

**Keywords: preschool, literacy, narrative language, listening comprehension, book reading, macrostructure, microstructure, feasibility**

#### **INTRODUCTION**

Children from low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds have an elevated risk for language and reading difficulties and related academic consequences, as compared with peers from middle and upper class backgrounds (Brooks-Gunn and Duncan, 1997; McLoyd, 1998; Denton and West, 2002). Hair et al. (2006) reported that approximately one-fourth of all kindergarteners enter school with language development that is behind that of their peers, but children of poverty tend to carry this "risk" profile with higher frequency than their peers from mainstream environments. Moreover, these achievement gaps are observable across school grades. For example, Fiester (2010) reported that 83% of fourth-grade students from low-income families performed below proficiency standards on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) reading test, as compared with 55% of students from moderate to high-income families.

Students who are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds may be especially challenged in their abilities to maintain levels of performance commensurate with peers from economically secure households as they progress through school (Chall and Jacobs, 2003; Pianta et al., 2008). Some evidence suggests that early-emerging disparities in educational attainment related to socio-economic factors may become more substantial over time due to a phenomenon referred to as the Matthew effect (Bast and Reitsma, 1998; Morgan et al., 2008; McNamara et al., 2011; Morgan et al., 2011; but see Baumert et al., 2012). The Matthew effect is demonstrated when children with weak initial performance are less able to benefit from learning opportunities than their higher-skilled peers (Burstall, 1978; Stanovich, 1986). Other research, while not specifically testing for the Matthew effect, emphasizes the stability of early literacy delays (Juel, 1988; Cunningham and Stanovich, 1997; Cabell et al., 2013). For example, in a recent longitudinal study of preschoolers from low SES homes, Cabell et al. (2013) found that emergent literacy profiles based on performance in the fall of the preschool year were highly stable, especially for highest and lowest achievers. Of the children in the lowest achievement group in the fall, only 21% moved into the average range by spring. Interestingly, those children who did make an upward shift in ranking had higher initial levels of oral language abilities. Taken together, these findings underscore the need for evidence-based interventions to close the gap for disadvantaged students early on, to develop a strong language and literacy foundation that yields success in school and life.

Successful acquisition of literacy depends on adequate development of decoding skills as well as broader language skills for text comprehension (Storch and Whitehurst, 2002). As a group, children from low SES backgrounds enter school with lower performance in both domains, including delays in alphabetic knowledge and phonological awareness, which support the acquisition of decoding abilities, and delays in meaning-related knowledge and skills, e.g., vocabulary, syntax, higher-level language skills, and world knowledge, which contribute to the development of reading comprehension (Hart and Risley, 1995; Lonigan et al., 1998; Hirsch, 2003; Durham et al., 2007; Huttenlocher et al., 2010). Research over the last three decades has provided strong evidence documenting the efficacy of interventions that explicitly and systematically target code skills in preschool-aged children of low SES backgrounds. Comprehensive reviews of research have concluded that explicit instruction in alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and letter-sound relationships leads to significant improvements in children's reading and spelling abilities, including children from low SES homes and other at-risk groups (National Reading Panel, 2000; National Early Literacy Panel, 2009; Piasta and Wagner, 2010). In contrast, there is less evidence for interventions that close performance gaps in the broader language skills that support the development of reading comprehension abilities, although a body of positive evidence is beginning to emerge (cf. National Early Literacy Panel, 2009; Fricke et al., 2013).

Shared book reading interventions are probably the most commonly studied oral language interventions for young pre-readers, as can be observed in recent meta-analyses by the National Early Literacy Panel (2009) and Swanson et al. (2011). The largest group of studies included in these syntheses has examined a method of shared storybook reading, termed "dialogic reading" in which parents or teachers try to engage a child in a conversation about the storybook during reading by asking open ended wh-questions, repeating the child's correct responses, and following the child's lead with the goal of having the child gradually take the lead in the book discussion (e.g., Lonigan and Whitehurst, 1998). Other shared book reading interventions have included a focus on teaching new vocabulary from storybooks (e.g., Beck and McKeown, 2007), using limited questioning to foster comprehension skills (e.g., Morrow, 1988) or computer-administered read aloud sessions (e.g., Verhallen et al., 2006). From these studies, it is clear that shared book reading activities help to improve children's vocabulary knowledge. However, relatively few studies examined effects for other aspects of oral language, such as syntax, narrative macrostructure and microstructure, and general listening comprehension (but see Reese et al., 2010). The two aforementioned research syntheses provided effect sizes for vocabulary compared to other oral language measures (e.g., norm referenced measures of receptive and expressive language, language sample measures, qualitative and quantitative measures of narrative retells). Although significantly positive effect sizes were obtained for oral language across studies [*ES* = 0*.*30 and *ES* = 0*.*35 in National Early Literacy Panel (2009) and Swanson et al. (2011), respectively], these effect sizes were smaller than those obtained for vocabulary (*ES* = 1*.*02 and *ES* = 0*.*60). Clearly, more research is needed to examine effects on multiple components of language, and identify interventions that have effects large enough to help close gaps for at-risk children.

The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility of a new intervention program focused on retelling narratives from authentic children's books and to determine if it showed promise of effectiveness for improving meaning-related knowledge and skills in preliterate children from low SES backgrounds. We called this program "Structured Narrative Retell Instruction" (SNRI), and our rationale for developing it was based on previous research on shared book reading, as well as other research focused on children's comprehension and production of narratives.

First, research indicates that children's understanding of narrative structure develops prior to their comprehension of print and correlates with their later reading comprehension abilities (Bishop and Edmundson, 1987; Fazio et al., 1996; Kendeou et al., 2005; Oakhill and Cain, 2007; Dooley and Matthews, 2009; Wellman et al., 2011). These narrative skills are often weakened in children with language and learning difficulties (Merritt and Liles, 1987; Scott and Windsor, 2000; Cain, 2003; Fey et al., 2004). For example, a recent study of at-risk first grade children reported that responders and non-responders to brief code-based interventions showed significantly different performance on the preintervention assessments of narrative language skills (Allen et al., 2012). Second, narrative interventions involving story grammar analysis have generally been shown to be effective in improving reading comprehension skills in older, school-aged children (Dimino et al., 1995; National Reading Panel, 2000; Shanahan et al., 2010). Third, although relatively few studies have included preschool-aged children, there is some evidence that narrativebased language interventions can be successful for children who exhibit language impairments and other developmental delays (Petersen et al., 2010; Spencer and Slocum, 2010). Petersen (2011) reviewed narrative intervention studies involving children with language impairments or learning disabilities of the nine studies included in the review, three included at least some preschoolers in their participant sample (Tyler and Sandoval, 1994; Hayward and Schneider, 2000; Davies et al., 2004). Across all of the studies reviewed, children with language impairments benefited from narrative interventions, with gains observed in grammar skills, vocabulary, and narrative structure. Additionally, focusing on narratives during oral language intervention provides a medium for clinicians to target both lower- and higher-level language skills simultaneously, using both direct and indirect methods. For example, while eliciting narrative retells from children, clinicians can use modeling, expansion, prompting and elicited imitation to promote children's understanding and use of more advanced syntactic structures (e.g., Swanson et al., 2005).

Most previous studies targeting narrative skills in pre-readers have used researcher-designed narratives and/or wordless picture books to teach and elicit narratives (e.g., Hayward and Schneider, 2000; Davies et al., 2004; Swanson et al., 2005; Peña et al., 2006; Petersen et al., 2008; Spencer and Slocum, 2010; Allen et al., 2012; Green and Klecan-Aker, 2012; ). These procedures help researchers provide greater control over the story structure and narrative components, as well as the length and linguistic complexity of narrative materials. However, we developed SNRI to focus on narrative stories from authentic published children's storybooks. Several factors led to this decision. The first involved ecological validity: If the ultimate goal is to improve later reading comprehension outcomes, it seems fitting to expose children to authentic texts as much as possible. As discussed previously, there is also a sizeable research base showing the benefits of shared book reading activities for vocabulary development (National Early Literacy Panel, 2009; Swanson et al., 2011; see also Cunningham and Zibulsky, 2011). Further, published children's storybooks often contain engaging artwork that can help make book reading and book discussions more enjoyable for young children. Lastly, although our study did not address home literacy activities, if our intervention was found to be effective, it is possible that it could be adapted in the future for implementation by parents in the home. We hypothesized that authentic children's books would likely be easier to incorporate into home literacy activities than experimenter-developed stories.

In an evidence-based practice framework, large-scale, fully powered randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the "gold standard" for making treatment decisions (Rosen et al., 2006). However, these studies can be extremely costly in terms of human resources, time, and participant effort, leading some to suggest that careful consideration should be given to their usage (Sibbald and Roland, 1998; Stolberg et al., 2004). Consequently, it is prudent to establish the feasibility of an intervention during its development period, before proceeding with larger investigations. In the early phases of clinical outcomes research—including the process during which intervention is being developed preliminary, small-scale investigations that are often exploratory in nature are important for helping researchers to determine if large-scale studies are viable pursuit (Robey, 2004; Fey and Finestack, 2009). From such investigations, researchers are able to assess whether or not the developed intervention can be implemented with fidelity within the target population, as well as whether the ideas and outcomes are able to be modified and sustainable (Bowen et al., 2009). Thus, the ultimate goal of our study was to determine whether a RCT investigating SNRI was warranted, or whether further development of the intervention was needed.

In sum, the goal of the current study was to determine whether the previously untested SNRI was feasible and whether it showed promise of being effective for improving meaning-related skills in at-risk, preliterate children. Our research questions included: (1) Is SNRI viable in its current form, or are modifications necessary prior to pursuing a larger-scale study? (2) Do children receiving SNRI show improvement in their vocabulary knowledge, narrative understanding, or narrative production skills? To address these research questions, we implemented SNRI within a childcare center that served low-income families. Because these participants could already be considered to be at risk for language, reading, and future academic difficulties due to economic disadvantage, we did not wish to withhold treatment from one group as a no-treatment control condition. Instead, we contrasted effects of SNRI with an intervention that focused on code skills, Code-Focused Literacy Instruction (CFLI). Which also used authentic children's storybooks but targeted letter knowledge, phonological awareness, and print knowledge. Previous research with preschoolers indicates that instruction in codebased skills does not generalize to comprehension skills and vice versa (e.g., Gamse et al., 2008; Bianco et al., 2010). These findings suggest that CFLI could serve as an appropriate, albeit conservative, control against which to compare the experimental SNRI. Our hypotheses were that (1) SRNI would be able to be implemented with fidelity, and (2) that children receiving SNRI instruction would be more likely to demonstrate gains in meaning-related knowledge and skills (i.e., on assessments of vocabulary, narrative understanding, and narrative production) than children receiving CFLI instruction.

## **METHODS**

#### **PARTICIPANTS**

Participants were recruited from a childcare center in Columbia, South Carolina, US that primarily served economically- disadvantaged families. Most of the families who patronized the childcare center received state assistance to pay for childcare while they worked or participated in job-related education or training. The center staff was asked to distribute study information and informed consent forms to parents of all enrolled children between 3 and 6 years of age (*n* = 25). Ten child participants aged 49–82 months (7 preschool, 2 kindergarten, 1 first grade) were initially recruited. All children were African American and spoke English as their first and only language. Prior to the instructional interventions, children were randomly assigned to receive either SNRI or CFLI treatment. One child from the SNRI group moved after the first week of intervention; thus, all study analyses focus on the five children in the CFLI group and four children in the SNRI group who completed all pre-test, intervention sessions, and post-test sessions. Each of these children had perfect attendance or made up any missed sessions prior to post-testing. Each child received free copies of each book used in the intervention, for a total of 10 books (two books were used in two intervention sessions each).

## **MEASURES**

Participants were presented a battery of assessments designed to characterize their individual language and cognitive profiles. Some tests were administered to provide a detailed profile of the children's speech, language and cognitive skills prior to the intervention, whereas others were used to measure change in targeted skills across the intervention period. All of the testing occurred in individual sessions in a quiet area of the center. The examiners were graduate students in speech-language pathology who had received training regarding the tests' administration and scoring procedures prior to meeting with the participants. A Ph.D. faculty member supervised each student examiner and was available on site to provide guidance and answer questions as needed. All sessions were audio recorded and video recorded for data analysis and reliability checking. Unless otherwise noted, all standardized assessments were double-scored by trained research staff to ensure reliability of scoring. All disagreements were resolved by discussion with the first author.

#### *Pre-intervention descriptive measures*

First, nonverbal cognitive abilities were measured with two subtests from the Leiter International Performance Scale-Revised (Leiter-R; Roid and Miller, 1997). The Figure Ground subtest measures a child's ability to identify an embedded figure within a complex picture. The Form Completion subtest measures a child's ability to recognize a whole picture from separate pictures of its parts. Next, basic receptive and expressive language abilities were assessed using the Basic Concepts and Parallel Sentence Production subtests of the Assessment of Language and Literacy (ALL; Lombardino et al., 2005). In the Basic Concepts subtest, participants are asked to point to pictures that represent concepts described by the examiner (e.g., size, location, comparison). The Parallel Sentence Production subtest evaluates a child's production of grammatical morphemes and syntactic structures. Following the procedures of the test manual, acceptable dialectical variations received full credit.

#### *Pre-and post-test measures of intervention targets*

*Receptive vocabulary.* The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Fourth Edition (PPVT-4; Dunn and Dunn, 2007) was used to measure receptive vocabulary knowledge. For this test, the examiner presented a series of pictures, with four pictures per page, to the participant. The participant was required to point to the picture that was named or described by the examiner.

*Listening comprehension.* The preschool section of the ALL Listening Comprehension subtest (Lombardino et al., 2005) was presented. For this subtest, participants listened to three brief stories, each read twice by the examiner. After a story was read the first time, participants were asked to retell the story back to the examiner. Then the story was read a second time, and participants were asked to answer three to four comprehension questions about the story. Responses from the retells and comprehension questions were scored from audio recordings by trained research assistants according to the test manual, which awarded binary credit for inclusion of specific content elements from the story. The maximum possible score across the three stories was 21.

*Narrative macrostructure.* A finer-grained assessment of participants' narrative skills was obtained by transcribing and coding transcripts of participants' retells of the three preschool stories from the ALL Listening Comprehension subtest. To assess narrative macrostructure, each transcript was scored based on the following five components: characters, initiating event, character response, remaining events, and end of story. Each component received a score between 0 and 2, depending on the accuracy and amount of detail provided. For example, when all characters were referred to with nonspecific labels (e.g., "the boy" or "the girl"), one point was awarded for the character component, whereas when specific character names were used, two points were awarded. Scores for all components across all stories were summed, for a maximum possible score of 30. To ensure reliability of macrostructure scores, two trained research assistants coded macrostructure for each narrative. The correlation between total scores assigned by each rater was 0.99.