Dialogic Book-Sharing as a Privileged Intersubjective Space

Abstract

Parental reading to young children is well-established as being positively associated with child cognitive development, particularly their language development. Research indicates that a particular, "intersubjective," form of using books with children, "Dialogic Book-sharing" (DBS), is especially beneficial to infants and pre-school aged children, particularly when using picture books. The work on DBS to date has paid little attention to the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the approach. Here, we address the question of what processes taking place during DBS confer benefits to child development, and why these processes are beneficial. In a novel integration of evidence, ranging from non-human primate communication through iconic gestures and pointing, archaeological data on Pre-hominid and early human art, to experimental and naturalistic studies of infant attention, cognitive processing, and language, we argue that DBS entails core characteristics that make it a privileged intersubjective space for the promotion of child cognitive and language development. This analysis, together with the findings of DBS intervention studies, provides a powerful intellectual basis for the wide-scale promotion of DBS, especially in disadvantaged populations.

Keywords: dialogic book-sharing; gaze; infant attention; intersubjectivity; joint attention; language learning; parent-infant interaction; pointing.

Figure 1

Typical affectionate intersubjective behaviors in Dialogic Book-sharing, illustrated from the authors' training materials: (A) Following child gaze; (B) Following child pointing; (C) Pointing to focus of child interest and naming-elaborating; (D) Linking book-content to child experience and animating.

Figure 2

This beautiful illustration by Oxenbury (1987) provides clear, repeated prototypical depictions of familiar categories of subjects, objects and actions whose reference can be readily apprehended by infants from around 1 year. It also presents parents with excellent opportunities for different levels of verbal scaffolding, according to their infant's age and experience. These can range from providing simple labels for the youngest infants (“baby,” “cup,” “drinking”), to linking to the infant's own experience and elaborating (look, that baby's got a cup like yours'), to talking about perspectives and mental states for older infants and children (Does this baby know that his biscuit's being taken? How does that baby feel when the other baby pours milk on his head?!). Copyright © 1987 Helen Oxenbury From CLAP HANDS by Helen Oxenbury Reproduced by permission of Walker Books Ltd, London, SE11 5HJ www.walker.co.uk.