Davies, C., McGillion, M., Rowland, C. et al. (1 more author) (2020) Can inferencing be trained in preschoolers using shared book-reading? A randomised controlled trial of parents’ inference-eliciting questions on oral inferencing ability. Journal of Child Language, 47 (3). pp. 655-679. ISSN 0305-0009
Abstract
The ability to make inferences is essential for effective language comprehension. While inferencing training benefits reading comprehension in school-aged children (see Elleman, 2017, for a review), we do not yet know whether it is beneficial to support the development of these skills prior to school entry. In a pre-registered randomised controlled trial, we evaluated the efficacy of a parent-delivered intervention intended to promote four-year-olds’ oral inferencing skills during shared book-reading. One hundred children from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds were randomly assigned to inferencing training or an active control condition of daily maths activities. The training was found to have no effect on inferencing. However, inferencing measures were highly correlated with children's baseline language ability. This suggests that a more effective approach to scaffolding inferencing in the preschool years might be to focus on promoting vocabulary to develop richer and stronger semantic networks.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Cambridge University Press. This is an author-produced version of a paper subsequently published in Journal of Child Language. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | randomised controlled trial; inferencing; language intervention; oral language; shared book-reading |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Psychology (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ECONOMIC & SOCIAL RESEARCH COUNCIL (ESRC) ES/M003752/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Jan 2020 12:08 |
Last Modified: | 19 Oct 2021 12:05 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press (CUP) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1017/s0305000919000801 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:155007 |