Parent-child Book Reading: A Structured Home Context to Stimulate Executive Functions of Kindergarten Children?
Funding Scheme
General Research Fund (RGC)
Funding Amount
HK$1,045,000
Awarded Year
2021
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How reading with children can improve their executive function
The project studied how shared book reading by parents and children can nurture executive function skills among preschoolers. This was a three-year longitudinal study which involved 200 Chinese preschool children and their parents. We examine the unique contribution of parental behaviours (stimulation, scaffolding, sensitivity, control) to a child’s executive function and the mechanisms that underlie that contribution over time. We construct and examine a theoretical model to demonstrate the structural relationship between shared reading behaviour, executive function skills, and later academic and behavioural outcomes of the children.
Sustainable Development Goals
In 2015, UN member states agreed to 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. The research team contributes towards the following SDG(s):
The main objective is to examine the unexplored benefits of parent-child shared reading for executive function among Chinese preschool children. These issues are addressed:
- What kinds of shared reading behaviour of parents contribute to children’s executive function skills?
- What cognitive mechanisms underly the relationship between parental shared reading behaviours, children’s executive function, and subsequent academic and social-behavioural outcomes?
This study extends existing research by providing a systematic understanding of the link between parental behaviours and executive function in the context of shared reading. It opens the door to new understanding of the benefits of shared reading as related to cognitive domains other than language. Our research findings lead us to recommend evidence-based strategies through which parents can foster executive function growth in children in a structured home context. Once book reading is embedded in the everyday life of families, parents do not need to allocate extra time and money to implement such executive function stimulating strategies. This intervention can have substantial impact by being more readily applied by parents in real life. Using easily available tools such as storybooks, we increase the engagement of families from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in the process of nurturing their children’s cognitive development.
