Training caregivers to facilitate communicative participation of preschool children with language impairment during storybook reading

This study reports the effects of training six adult caregivers to use an interactive reading routine, termed Complete Reading Cycle (CRC), during storybook reading with their preschool children, aged 3;2 to 3;5, who exhibited language impairment. Caregivers were taught to be more responsive to their children's communicative attempts during reading and to more actively engage the children in reading the story. Measures of child change included communicative participation and lexical diversity of utterances during adult-child shared reading. Children significantly increased the frequency of communicative turns, total number of words, and number of different words produced during shared storybook reading as a result of caregiver training. Five of the six children had higher mean frequencies for story initiations during training. However, increases in initiations were not statistically significant, with considerable variability across children for this measure. Learning outcomes: (1) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to discuss positive communicative changes in children with language impairment during adult-child storybook reading. (2) As a result of this activity, the participant will be able to use the storybook reading procedures with parents of preschool children exhibiting language impairment. (C) 2003 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.