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We experimentally assessed a 1-month, home-based intervention, designed to optimize parental reading of picture books to young children. Parents in the experimental group received instructions to increase their rates of open-ended questions, function/attribute questions, and expansions; to respond appropriately to children's attempts to answer these questions; and to decrease their frequency of straight reading and questions that could be answered by pointing. Control-group parents were instructed to read in their customary fashion. All families audiotaped their reading sessions at home. Analysis of these tapes demonstrated that the experimental-group parents complied with the intervention instructions. Children in the experimental group scored significantly higher than children in the control group on standardized posttests of expressive language ability. On the basis of analysis of audiotapes, children in the experimental group also had a higher mean length of utterance (MLU), a higher frequency of phrases, and a lower frequency of single words. Follow-up 9 months after the completion of treatment disclosed continued, although statistically diminished, differences between the two groups.

Picture book story time offers a potentially rich opportunity for young children to learn language. Wells (1985a) found that approximately 5% of the daily speech of a sample of 24-month-olds occurred in story-time settings. In addition to being a setting in which children are prone to talk, story time also appears to evoke tutorial behavior from mothers that varies across dimensions such as social class. Ninio and Bruner (1978) studied a single middle-class mother—child pair over a 10-month period, with no special instructions given with regard to book reading. The mother labeled objects most frequently during picture book reading, with 75.6% of all instances of labeling occurring in that context. In addition, the mother provided consistent and informative feedback for the child's attempts at labeling (all incorrect labels were corrected, and 81% of the child's correct labels were reinforced). Similar effects have been found in case studies by Snow and Goldfield (1983) and Moerk and Moerk (1979). Ninio (1980) examined social class differences and found that...