Accelerating language development through picture book reading: A systematic extension to Mexican day care.

Previous research demonstrates linguistic advances in middle-class 2-yr-olds in the US resulting from training parents to read with their children following a particular style. This style, called dialogic reading, encourages children to talk about picture books and gives them models and feedback for progressively more sophisticated language use. This research extends these procedures to a day-care setting using 20 Mexican 2-yr-olds from low-income backgrounds. Children in the intervention group were read to individually by a teacher using dialogic reading techniques. The control group children were given individual arts and crafts instruction by the same teacher. Effects of the intervention were assessed through standardized language tests and by comparing the children's spontaneous language while they shared a picture book with an adult who was unaware of their group assignment. Differences favoring the intervention group were found on all standardized language posttests and on some measures of language production. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)