When a new member arrives in the family during the first consultation with the pediatrician, we hear that it is very important to read to the little ones from the first month of life. Pediatricians note that by picking up a book and reading to little ones, it is possible to form stronger emotional bonds with parents, acquire vocabulary, and improve cognitive and motor skills.
It supported something. This idea is something that has important medical support that comes, for example, from the American Academy of Pediatrics, which clearly recommends that pediatricians encourage shared reading from birth, even in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Gain a vocabulary. One of the most real benefits, especially as children get older, is that they hear many different sounds that enrich their language. That’s something that a 2019 study focused on, which calculated the “million word gap,” estimating that children raised in families where reading is frequent read 1.4 million more words through stories than those who were never read to before entering school. However, this calculation should always be kept in mind.
This early exposure is the foundation of language, and it’s not just about word count, but about the variety and complexity of literary vocabulary, which rarely comes up in everyday conversation over dinner or bath time. Here it should be remembered that all books should be adapted to the age of the child and gradually increase in complexity.
Education. The effects of this linguistic immersion are significant in the long term, as determined in a 1995 study, which found that shared reading at the preschool level explained about 8% of the variance in reading and language skills when children reached first grade.
At the neuronal level. Neuroscience has also stepped up to understand this phenomenon, and a cross-sectional study used functional magnetic resonance imaging in 3- to 5-year-old children. From these images, it was discovered that those from enriched reading environments showed greater activation in the left parieto-temporo-occipital association cortex while listening to stories.
Although the study is correlational and does not allow us to confirm that reading directly causes structural changes, it indicates that shared reading consistently stimulates areas of the brain responsible for semantic integration and mental visualization.
Actual causation. The Tula trial came in 2020 when several trials involving nearly 2,600 children between the ages of 1 and 6 were analyzed. With this sample, it was determined that shared reading has a real causal effect on expressive and receptive language development.
Of course, science also has a foot on the ground indicating that this causal effect is modest and depends largely on dose and interaction. This is why mechanically reading a book quietly has a minimal effect, since the real explosive benefit occurs when the reading is interactive, asking the child questions, pointing, commenting on the story…
Picture | Cottonbrough Studio
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