Document Type

Article

Publication Date

11-25-2025

Division

School of Education Counseling and Psychology in Education

Keywords

Spatial talk, dialogic reading, eBooks, parent-child talk, shared reading

Disciplines

Developmental Psychology

Abstract

Prior research indicates that training parents to use dialogic reading fosters children’s early literacy and that dialogic prompts in an eBook encourage parents and children to talk about the story. The current study examines whether dialogic reading prompts embedded in a spatially-themed eBook can enhance parent-preschooler spatial talk, valuable because the acquisition of spatial language is linked to STEM skills in preschool-age children. Sixty-three dyads read either an enhanced eBook with prompts or a control eBook without prompts. Dyads using the enhanced eBook engaged in significantly more spatial talk, focusing on spatial dimensions and locations. In contrast, number-related talk (not central to the storyline) did not increase. These findings suggest that, given an appropriately-themed storybook, dialogic reading prompts can effectively promote spatial language during shared reading, potentially supporting early spatial development crucial for later STEM success.

Publication Title

Journal of Children & Media

Volume

20

Issue

3

First Page

469

Last Page

480

DOI

10.1080/17482798.2025.2588175

Rights

It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.

Comments

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available at https://osf.io/7w85x/.

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Available for download on Tuesday, May 25, 2027

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