Parent-EMBRACE: An Adaptive Dialogic Reading Intervention

Arun Balajiee Lekshmi Narayanan, Ju Eun Lim, Tri Nguyen, Ligia E. Gómez, M. Adelaida Restrepo, Chris Blais, Arthur M. Glenberg, Erin Walker

Abstract: Dialogic reading is a practice where adults and children engage in a dialogue as they read together to improve children’s language strategies and comprehension. These dialogues are often initiated by parent questioning behaviors, but parents do not always engage in this behavior spontaneously. In this paper, we describe an adaptive intervention for dialogic reading, Parent-EMBRACE, built into an iPad application that uses an embodied cognition approach and is designed specifically for Latino dual language learners in the US. The intervention: 1) Models parent question asking, 2) Provides parents with on-demand hints on questions that can be asked at particular moments during the story, 3) Prompts parents to ask questions at appropriate times, 4) Includes a dashboard that presents parents with data on their question-asking behaviors, 5) Provides all support in both English and Spanish. We discuss the implications of this intervention as an intelligent tutoring system for parent-child interactions, plans to extend and evaluate the system.