As digital technologies increasingly shape children's early learning experiences, their role in supporting foundational literacy practices, such as shared reading, warrants investigation. The current article examined whether conversational agents (CAs) powered by artificial intelligence can enhance parent-child conversations that extend beyond the text (i.e., extratextual talk) and foster early literacy development. Forty parents and their 4- to 5-year-old children were randomly assigned to either a CA-assisted intervention group or a traditional shared reading (active control) group. Over 1 month, families in both groups read together at home at comparable frequencies. Results showed that CA-assisted reading was associated with increases in two key measures of extratextual talk: parent and child decontextualized language and conversational turn taking. Notably, some of these gains transferred to traditional, non-CA-supported reading contexts. Despite these interactional benefits, no differences were observed between groups on measures of children's early literacy skills at the conclusion of the intervention. These findings suggest that CAs can serve as effective tools for scaffolding parent-child conversation during shared reading. However, further research is needed to optimize CA designs to support long-term language and literacy outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

This study used a large administrative data set of Head Start programs across the United States, the Head Start Program Information Report (PIR), to explore disparities in program rates of screening, referral, and identification for early intervention between Migrant and Seasonal Head Start (MSHS) and Head Start (HS) programs. Results from program-level analyses of MSHS and HS disparities showed that MSHS programs screened more children but referred and identified fewer children. Disparities in identification persisted even in the presence of demographic controls and matching on key demographics. Post hoc sensitivity analyses showed that MSHS identification rates were negatively moderated by rurality. Implications to inform policymaking related to early intervention and preschool for children with or at risk for disabilities and dual language learners in rural Head Start programs are discussed.

PurposeThis study investigated the effects of early shared reading and access to books on reading vocabulary in middle childhood and the pathways associated with later reading success.MethodPath analysis of data from four waves of a national longitudinal study of children (N = 7,751) was used to investigate direct and indirect effects of early home literacy practices at age 3 on reading attainment at age 9, controlling for demographic and family characteristics. Children were aged 3, 5, 7, and 9 years at each respective wave of data collection, and 49.1% of the sample were girls. The majority of caregivers in the study were White (94.3%).ResultsEarly shared reading and availability of books predicted higher reading scores at age 9, controlling for covariates at age 3. Sixty-four percent of the association between early shared reading and reading attainment in middle childhood was explained by several paths incorporating language and literacy variables at age 5 and reading for pleasure at age 7. The association between books at age 3 and vocabulary at age 9 was fully accounted for through an increase in the number of books at age 5 and greater likelihood of reading for pleasure at age 7.ConclusionBoth early shared reading and availability of books predicted reading attainment in middle childhood though through different pathways. The findings support reading interventions that provide books and shared reading opportunities in early childhood.

Interactive shared book reading – particularly when parents engage in decontextualized talk which goes beyond the here-and-now – is an evidenced-based approach to promote preschool-aged children’s engagement with a story and emergent literacy. Parental training of interactive reading often involves an experienced clinician or researcher who can provide personalized, “in-the-moment” instruction. Although such methods are highly effective, they are expensive and time-intensive, often limiting participation by busy parents. Here, we extend this approach through a digital tool designed to encourage dyadic interaction during shared book reading via a conversational agent (CA). In this paper, we describe the results of a one-month usability test of the app with N=20 parents and their 3-to-5-year-old children. The app first provided parents with information on interactive reading strategies. During reading, it used AI technology to deliver interactive prompts aimed at promoting decontextualized conversation. Parent-child conversation while reading with the CA was nearly double that of conversation when reading without the CA. Approximately one month later, parent and child talk while reading with CA remained high. Additional analyses indicated that parents most often expanded on the CA’s prompts rather than repeating them, thereby eliciting more verbal responses from children. Results indicate that CAs have the potential to enrich dyadic interactions around print books in ways known to promote children’s early literacy abilities. Future directions around the scalability and efficacy of CA technologies to augment literacy practices are discussed.

This study examined whether variation in parent-child conversations about scientific processes can be explained by child gender and the science-related resources available to parents, known as scientific capital. Parents of 4- and 5-year-old children (N = 70) from across the United States completed a survey of science capital and were then videotaped with their children at home interacting with two science activities (i.e., balance scale and circuit toy). Videos were transcribed and analyzed for parents' science process language. Results indicated that parents' science process language occurred significantly more often during conversations with boys, among families with higher levels of scientific capital, and during the scale activity. Gender differences in science process language were not apparent at higher levels of science capital and during the scale activity. These effects speak to the need for measuring child, family, and contextual characteristics when identifying factors that promote children's early science engagement and learning. Results are discussed in terms of future interventions that could build scientific capital as a means to counteract stereotypes around gender and science. (c) 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

This study explores how caregiver-child scientific conversation during storybook reading focusing on the challenges or achievements of famous female scientists impacts preschoolers' mindset, beliefs about success, and persistence. Caregiver-child dyads (N = 202, 100 female, 35% non-White, aged 4-5, f = .15) were assigned to one of three storybook conditions, highlighting the female scientist's achievements, effort, or, in a baseline condition, neither. Children were asked about their mindset, presented with a persistence task, and asked about their understanding of effort and success. Findings demonstrate that storybooks highlighting effort are associated with growth mindset, attribution of success to hard work, and increased persistence. Caregiver language echoed language from the assigned storybook, showing the importance of reading storybooks emphasizing hard work.

Researchers largely rely on child language and literacy measures to determine the effectiveness of interventions for Latino dual language learners. However, some of these measures may miss certain strengths of these students. This study identified two unstandardized language and literacy tasks (IDELA food and animal vocabulary and personal narratives) that might leverage some eco-cultural assets of Latino children; it also examined concurrent associations between these tasks and standardized language and literacy tests. Participants were 237 Latino kindergarteners ( M age = 67.22 months, SD = 4.12; 51% female). Positive associations were found between standardized tests and the IDELA food and animal vocabulary ( β = 0.92–1.40; large magnitude) and personal narrative tasks ( β = 0.28–0.46; medium magnitude), controlling for important covariates, including the language of administration of assessment. Further research might use these tasks as complementary assessments to gauge the impact of interventions on the language and literacy skills of Latino dual-language learners in kindergarten.

Word learning encompasses the understanding of interconnected clusters of words, where the comprehension of one word aids in the learning of another. Semantic networks, which have a long history in cognitive science, are commonly employed to explore these semantic relationships. However, limited research has been conducted on adults’ use of semantically relevant conversations in the field of early childhood education, and there is insufficient information regarding contextual factors influencing the development of semantic networks. The present study investigated the extent to which the use and effectiveness of semantically relevant conversations vary across activity contexts. This study analyzed data from the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development (HSLLD) Corpus available in the CHILDES database, focusing on a subset of 62 children. This study utilized four statistical features to describe the structure of semantic networks: short path length, diameter, density, and clustering coefficient. The following findings emerged: (1) Book reading displayed a significantly greater diameter than toy play and mealtime, indicating that there exist specific pairs of concepts or words within its semantic networks that are notably more distant from each other than in the other two activity settings. (2) Toy play exhibited a significantly greater density in comparison to book reading and mealtime, suggesting a higher degree of overlap or interdependence among the concepts within its semantic networks. (3) Book reading demonstrated a significantly greater clustering coefficient compared to toy play and mealtime, signifying the existence of cohesive word communities or groups of words characterized by dense internal connections. (4) Adults’ use of semantically relevant conversations during book reading was positively associated with children’s lexical diversity.

Parents' questions are an effective strategy for fostering the development of young children's science understanding and discourse. However, this work has not yet distinguished whether the frequency of questions about scientific content differs between mothers and fathers, despite some evidence from other contexts (i.e., book reading) showing that fathers ask more questions than mothers. The current study compared fathers' and mothers' questions to their four- to six-year-old children (N = 49) while interacting with scientific stimuli at a museum research exhibit. Results indicated that fathers asked significantly more questions than mothers, and fathers' questions were more strongly related to children's scientific discourse. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of adult questions for the development of children's scientific understanding as well as broadening research to include interlocutors other than mothers.

This study focuses on the relationship between teacher–text–child interactions during shared picturebook reading and its effect on children’s narrative comprehension. Using a micro-analytic approach, we studied nine large-group bookreading sessions of one experienced teacher and her classroom of 17 preschoolers from low-income backgrounds over a school year. We coded the bookreading interactions according to the level of analytic rigor demanded by the questions the teacher asked (literal, simple inferential, complex inferential), the children's responses to these questions (incorrect, adequate, correct), and the teacher's follow-up responses (evaluative, elaborative), including additional follow-up questions and prompts elicited by the children's responses. We examined whether picturebook difficulty (low, medium, high) was related to the demand level of the teacher's questions and the children's responses. We also examined whether children’s participation in these interactions was associated with children’s narrative comprehension, which was tested at the beginning and end of the school year. Overall, the teacher consistently asked a higher proportion of inferential (80

With the aim of broadening our understanding of math engagement among families who are often underrepresented in research, the current study examined math engagement among 187 families with children aged 3-5 years old in two rural regions of the United States. Caregivers responded to open-ended questions regarding their preferred activities to engage in with their preschoolers and how they view math opportunities within the activities. Caregivers also responded to close-ended items regarding frequency of math activities and math attitudes. Coding of caregivers' open-ended responses revealed a heterogeneous range of family activities and perspectives regarding opportunities to engage in math. Correlations between open-ended and close-ended items revealed that open-ended items may tap into dimensions of family math engagement not captured by traditional close-ended inventories. Findings may help to inform future work aiming to create inclusive and accessible family math measures and interventions.

Studies that require participants to use educational apps or other technologies have often struggled with fidelity of implementation and even user uptake [e.g., 1]. That is, it is often unclear how much the participants have used the designated technologies at home or in the classroom when only self-reports are used to assess participants’ usage. In the event that the information can be objectively obtained using process data, the participants’ actual usage tends to be lower than what has been reported or observed via synchronous sessions [2]. Because remote studies on the impacts of technological innovations or interventions can often depend upon how much study participants actually use them independently, it is important to have strategies on-hand to increase the at-home use of these technologies. Our poster presents two years of data from a study focused on an educational app meant to improve children’s early literacy through modeling dialogic reading practices with an AI-powered conversational agent. The app features a virtual rabbit-agent who asks questions to prompt caregiver-child interactions as the caregiver reads a physical book aloud with their child. In the first year, focused on usability, we discovered there was sparse usage of the app, with 6 of the 20 participants procrastinating until the day before their post-test session to use it. We implemented four key changes–device, reading diary, text reminders, and compensation structure–to increase and incentivize participant usage of the app during the study’s second-year efficacy phase. Although we are unable to distinguish the unique contribution of the four changes implemented to increase user engagement with the app, clustering of the process data patterns suggests a clear increase in the app’s usage during the second year of the study. Our findings can be useful to researchers and practitioners facing similar implementation challenges.

Parent-child engagement in constrained (e.g., learning alphabet letters or sounds) and unconstrained (e.g., storytelling, defining words) literacy activities are central components of the home literacy environment. Unconstrained activities are particularly important for children's oral language and support school readiness. Yet, many parents do not recognize that unconstrained activities can promote learning. This study examines whether an immersive tool can help parents recognize the importance of unconstrained activities and how to embed learning into everyday home routines. N = 76 middle- to lower-income parents of three-year-old children were randomly assigned to a control condition or immersive "literacy scavenger hunt" where they self-explored opportunities to engage in unconstrained activities within everyday routines. The scavenger hunt was associated with an increase in parents' endorsement of unconstrained activities and verbal communication within parent-child interactions. Results are discussed in terms of intervention approaches that build adult capacity around supporting children's early literacy.

With increasing integration of AI-powered agents into educational technologies available to families with young children, the landscape of how caregivers and children interact together or separately with these technologies is underexplored. Understanding the nature of these interactions could critically inform the design of educational technologies to facilitate children’s learning, research methods for use in future studies involving adult-child dyad technology use, and policy decisions regarding the use of educational technology with young children. In this study, we explored the natural interactions among parent, child, and a child-friendly virtual rabbit character named Floppy. Floppy is a virtual agent in a Smart Speaker app that models adult dialogic reading and conversational strategies for use with young children (ages 4-6 years). Over a span of four to six weeks, 18 parent-child dyads read The Rainbow Fish, a classic children’s book by Marcus Pfister, during 24 at-home, remote sessions with Floppy. Of the 189 conversations generated during this time, 125 were initiated by a prompt spoken by Floppy. Though there were some variations among the dyads, across all conversations, parent-driven interactions made up 63% of the conversations, followed by child-driven conversations at 15.3%, Floppy-driven at 14.3%, and Floppy-and-parent-driven at 7.4%. A select few parents were more comfortable having their children interact directly with Floppy, whereas the majority of the parents would direct children’s attention back to themselves or help children understand the questions by repeating or reformulating Floppy’s prompts. More than half of the parents reported that their children formed emotional connections with the virtual character. These findings point to a need to clearly define the role of virtual agents, even ones with limited AI, in this type of triadic interaction.

Little is known about young children's ability to talk about absent members of their social network. We analyzed the speech of four children from 2 to 5 years. References to absent caregivers were relatively frequent, even when children were 2 years old. Such references were often generated spontaneously rather than being repetitions of a name produced by the child's interlocutor. Children's comments about absent family members occasionally expressed concern about contact with them but were predominantly neutral or reflective. By implication, children can maintain a representation of the various members of their social network from an early age, despite separation.

Narrative language abilities are foundational to literacy development and are a culturally grounded measure of early literacy for Latino children. This study evaluates the impacts on narrative language abilities and the costs of a 4-week, strengths-based program that leverages two valued sociocultural practices with built-in benefits, personal narratives, and family food routines (e.g., grocery shopping), for improving Latino kindergarteners' learning outcomes in the United States. Two-hundred and 34 children (M age = 67 months; 51% girls; 13 schools) and their parents participated in a cluster randomized trial. Children produced personal narratives at three time points: pretest, end-of-treatment, and 5-month follow-up. Four narrative features were measured: narrative coherence, elaborations, word types, and literate language features. Large positive impacts were observed on all four narrative features at the end-of-treatment posttest (d = 1.21-1.76). There was suggestive evidence of moderate impacts on one narrative feature (i.e., narrative coherence) at the 5-month follow-up (d = .59). The costs required to implement the family program were relatively low. Findings highlight the potential value of implementing this strengths-based program in schools serving Latino kindergarteners using a rigorous evaluation of its effectiveness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

It is well-established that participation in shared book reading interactions with caregivers supports chil-dren's early language and literacy development. Most of this literature focuses on reading experiences during the preschool period. Less is known about the nature and importance of such practices during infancy. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine literacy practices between parents and infants in a large cohort study, Growing Up in Ireland. Interview, survey, and direct measurements of children's language skills were used to examine whether parent-report of book reading practices when children were 9-months predicted child expressive vocabulary at 36-months ( N = 9171). Regression analysis in-dicated that approximately 80% of 9-month-old Irish children are read to by parents. Characteristics of families who were more likely to report reading with children emerged: those with higher educational attainment, fewer depressive symptoms, and those who report a high-quality home language environ-ment (e.g., reported talking more to children during everyday activities). Furthermore, children who were read to at 9-months had stronger expressive vocabulary skills at 36-months, even after accounting for socio-demographic and home literacy environment covariates measured at both 9-and 36-months. Re-sults are discussed using a bioecological framework to describe how proximal and distal factors in the child's environment converge to impact early childhood literacy development. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Children's mathematical knowledge at school entry varies considerably and predicts long-term achievement outcomes. Differences in children's exposure to math and number talk at home may help to explain variations in school-entry math ability. However, nearly all research on exposure to math and number talk has been conducted with parents and preschool-aged children. This longitudinal study examined to what extent parents talk about math with their 10-, 14- and 18-month infants during play. Additional analyses examined factors to explain variation in parent math talk at the family level (socio-economic status), parent level (beliefs about children's mathematical development) and child level (gender). Transcripts of dyadic play sessions were coded for references to numbers and math concepts (e.g., first, many, more). It was found that parents do talk about numbers and math concepts with infants, albeit rarely, and such language increases in frequency and complexity over time. Parents use more statements than questions about math, and most often reference small-number terms (1-3). Neither socio-economic status nor beliefs were predictive of parental math talk. However, parents used significantly more math references over time with boys than girls. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of social interactions during infancy in fostering children's mathematical knowledge.

In the current study, we provide a systematic understanding of how early childhood educators ( N = 209) believe that they would respond to children's scientific questions. We compared 105 inservice preschool and early elementary grade teachers' and 104 preservice teachers' responses on an online survey consisting of 3 parts: (a) responses to children's scientific questions (b) personal epistemologies and (c) demographic information. Results are consistent with naturalistic classroom data demonstrating that inservice and preservice teachers are more likely to answer children's questions with explanations rather than other types of responses when responding to children's science questions. We also explored possible relations between teachers' responses, demographic variables, and personal epistemologies. We discuss implications of these findings for how teachers' responses to children's questions may send a message to children about how to construct and reason about knowledge in the world. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Two studies explore how explanations that contain mechanistic information can influence 4and 5-year-old children's subsequent learning. In Study 1 (N = 56) children participated in a science task with their parents across five phases: (a) exploration phase, (b) parent explanation questions, (c) familiar phase, (d) novel extension phase, and (e) child recall. Parents' use of explations containing mechanistic information predicted children's ability to appropriately place more pieces in both the familiar and novel phases. In Study 2 (N = 64) children worked with an unfamiliar experimenter and were either exposed to explanations that did or did not include mechanistic information. Children who were exposed to mechanistic information were more likely to appropriately generalize the underlying concept in all phases. Together these studies indicate that exposure to mechanistic language helps children acquire knowledge of novel concepts.