A novel corpus of naturalistic picture book reading with 2-to 3-year-old children

Anastasia Stoops

Abstract:

Substantial literature suggests that reading to children is positively associated with language
outcomes, but the causal pathways are less well understood. One possibility is that reading to children
promotes language input that is particularly useful for some aspects of language learning. To better
understand the language that is produced during picture book reading, we built a sharable corpus of
caregiver-child interactions during book reading recorded in homes. Caregivers overwhelmingly read
the book text. However, books varied in the language they generated, with some books promoting
more conversational turns and extra-textual language, while others promoted more overall words,
unique words, and longer utterances. Relative to other conversational contexts, books generally gen-
erated overall more words, more lexically diverse talk, and longer utterances. We see different profiles
of language generated during book reading that are all plausibly linked with language skills. If a causal
pathway exists between shared book reading and language outcomes, a sensible candidate may be that
reading provides a varied range of linguistic experiences.