As in any context, how a parent approaches reading with their child can make or break the value of the overall experience. This questioner (an adult female) appeared in the corner of the picture book video on the screen to ask the children open-ended questions. Control group families listened to the unenhanced and streamed version of the e-book twice.
Finally, parents produced significantly more C-R-O-W-D prompts on pages where Ramone did not appear compared to parents in a control condition on the same storybook pages (Troseth et al., 2019). For this study, parent-child dyads in the control group were exposed to a version of the e-book that was minimally modified from the original version. During the first week of five readings, families listened to a version of the story with easier instructions from Ramona.
Next, parents in all three conditions were given a printed version of The Big Dog Problem and asked to read the story to their child as they would at home. During the two weeks, a member of the research team checked in with the family at scheduled intervals to ensure that the study procedure was followed. Families in the experimental condition were instructed at this point to switch to the second, challenging version of the Ramone eBook.
Two undergraduate research assistants, blind to the study hypothesis, served as coders for the video data.
Behavior During eBook Reading
Therefore, parents and children did not differ systematically by condition on positive, negative, or dyadic behavior at their first laboratory assessment. Post hoc analyzes for positive control, responsiveness, and performance during the task examined which conditions differed on these dimensions. Corrected for multiple comparisons, each pairwise comparison was tested at the significance level α = .025 divided by 3, or α = .008.
Parents in the experimental and choice conditions showed higher levels of positive control and task behavior compared to parents in the control group. No significant differences were found between parents in the experimental and choice conditions on these posttest outcomes (see Figure 1). Interestingly, only those in the experimental group showed a significantly higher response rate than the control group while reading e-books.
Another one-way MANOVA was conducted for negative parent outcomes, controlling for parent responsiveness on Day 1. Finally, a univariate analysis of variance on parent verbalizations during this lecture revealed a significant effect of condition when controlling for parent responsiveness the parents on day 1, F p < .001, η2 = .425. Post hoc tests with α = .008 revealed significant differences between the experimental and control conditions, as well as the choice and control conditions, in the number of parent verbalizations (see Figure 1).
For the corresponding postintervention positive child behavior outcomes (positive affect, responsiveness, on-task), the same type of MANOVA was used with parental responsiveness from day 1 controlled. Finally, in a one-way ANOVA controlling for Day 1 parental responsiveness, a significant effect of condition emerged on children's verbalizations during this reading, F p < .001,. In post-hoc tests, there were no condition differences at the α = 0.008 significance level, but significant differences were found at α = 0.05 between children's verbalizations in the experimental and control conditions, as well as in the choice and control conditions (see Figure 2).
The experimental group showed higher levels of reciprocity than the control group, but the selected group did not differ from the other two groups (see Figure 3).
Behavior During Paper Book Reading
Results of the post-hoc pairwise comparisons (α = .025 significance level divided by 3, or α = .008) resembled those found in the second day eBook outcomes: parents in both the experimental and choice condition groups had higher positive control and off-task behavior compared to that in the control group. At the α = .05 significance level, parental behavior in the experimental and choice condition was significantly different from that of the control group in responsiveness and positive affect. No differences between the experimental and choice conditions emerged for the outcomes in the post-hoc tests (see Figure 4).
Post-hoc tests with a significance level of α = 0.008 indicated no differences between the experimental and control conditions, or the choice and control conditions, in the number of parent verbalizations. Post-hoc tests at the α = 0.008 level of significance indicated that children in the experimental group were significantly different from those in the control group in terms of responsiveness and behaviors during the task. Those children in the choice condition were significantly different from those in the response control group at the α = 0.05 significance level.
Differences were only shown in the number of parent verbalizations between the second day e-book reading and the first day paper book reading. As expected, no major condition effects were found in the initial reading for children's positive behavior or for dyadic behavior. In the follow-up analyses, this finding only reached significance during the second day of paper book reading, but not during reading of the novel Election Problem eBook.
However, it is very promising that parents in the experimental group showed more significant parental responsiveness behaviors in both measures on the second day. Parents in the control group used slightly more of these tactics when reading paper books on the second day. Children in the choice and experimental conditions were higher than the control group on all outcomes during the second e-book reading, but only on numeracy.
Increased verbalizations (compared to the control group) also occurred on the second day of reading the paper book. When reading a new printed book with their parents on the second day, children whose parents were exposed to Ramone were more responsive than children in the control group. Children in the experimental condition were also more active and engaged while reading the paper book compared to children in the control group.
Specifically, the experimental families were significantly more interactive in their interaction while reading the eBook on the second day compared to the families in the control group. However, both experimental and choice families were significantly more reciprocated when reading the paper book on the second day compared to those in the control group. Children in the choice condition showed somewhat higher levels of cooperation on both day two readings compared to control group families, despite the lack of significant condition differences.
However, based on the child's performance during the second day of e-book reading, we were not surprised to see more conflict in the choice condition compared to the other two groups.
