Comparing Parent–Child Shared Reading and Children’s Understanding of Non-Rhyming, Rhyming, and Magazine Information Texts: An Exploratory Study

The home and preschool settings serve as important contexts for children’s early language and literacy development. There is limited research on parent–preschooler shared reading and children’s comprehension of information texts that vary in their format, structure, or mode of presentation. Comparing different types of information texts can help identify which features are associated with particular forms of parental scaffolding and children’s understanding, be used to guide parents, and perhaps find ways to promote children’s comprehension of these important text types. As such, this exploratory quantitative study examined shared reading of non-rhyming, rhyming, and magazine information texts and children’s listening comprehension, taking into consideration parental education, children’s age and gender, frequency of reading information texts at home, and total parents’ words in the interaction. The participants were 63 children (28 boys and 35 girls) and one of their parents (55 mothers and 8 fathers). On average, the children were 5 years, 11 months old (SD = 10.18 months). Data were collected in January–February of 2021 during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Parent–child dyads participated in three recorded online meetings, sharing two texts during each meeting and six texts in total: two non-rhyming information texts, two rhyming information texts, and two information magazine texts. Following each text, children answered two literal and two inferential comprehension questions. Negative binomial regression with generalized estimating equations revealed that overall, parents tended to ask more open questions and included significantly more elaborations and references to illustrations when reading the non-rhyming information texts. Children answered significantly more literal than inferential questions for both the non-rhyming and magazine texts compared with the rhyming texts. Various parent and child characteristics predicted parent talk and children’s comprehension. Results highlight how adult, child, and text characteristics can relate to the shared-reading discourse and children’s understanding. Future studies should be conducted to replicate and extend these findings.