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Promoting Mother–Infant Book Sharing and Infant Attention and Language Development in an Impoverished South African Population: A Pilot Study

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Abstract

The low rates of child literacy in South Africa are cause for considerable concern. Research from the developed world shows that parental sharing of picture books with infants and young children is beneficial for child language and cognitive development, as well as literacy skills. We conducted a pilot study to examine whether such benefits might extend to an impoverished community in South Africa, by evaluating the impact of training mothers in book sharing with their 14–18 month old infants. Seventeen mothers received book sharing training; and 13 mothers did not, but instead received a comparison training in toy play. We assessed the mothers’ behavior during both book sharing and toy play before and after training, and we also assessed infant attention and language. Mothers receiving book sharing training engaged well with it, and they also benefited from it; thus, compared to the comparison group mothers, they became more sensitive, more facilitating, and more elaborative with their infants during book sharing, and they also became more sensitive to their infants during toy play. In addition, infants whose mothers received the book sharing training showed greater benefits than the comparison group infants in both their attention and language. Training in book sharing for families living in conditions of marked socio-economic adversity in South Africa has the potential to be of considerable benefit to child developmental progress. A large scale controlled trial is required to confirm this.

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Notes

  1. We used the following books in our program: Helen Oxenbury—All fall down (1987), Clap hands (1987), Tickle Tickle (1987); assorted books from the “Touch and Feel” series (DK Publishing, 1998); and two books we made ourselves of photographs we took of people and situations in Khayelitsha (such as street scenes, local children at play, and domestic scenes, such as a mother cooking.).

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Acknowledgments

We wish to thank to the mothers and children of Khayeltisha who took part in this study. We are enormously grateful to our co-workers, Vuyolwethu Notholi, Pumza Gqwaka, Lindelwa Godwana, and Nosanda Mdudo, for their assistance in the delivery of the intervention, and Luleka Sobekwa, for assistance in the preparation, administration and scoring of the assessments. We are also indebted to Nick Robinson of Constable & Robinson publishers for funding this study. We also thank Carole Bloch, Marjorie Feni, Mirielle Landman, and Tom Brownill for their advice and assistance, and Pamela Sheeran, Mark and Cathy Corbett, and Anne and Paul Nurse for further support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK

    Peter J. Cooper, Zahir Vally, Hallam Cooper, Theo Radford, Arthur Sharples & Lynne Murray

  2. Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa

    Peter J. Cooper, Mark Tomlinson & Lynne Murray

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  1. Peter J. Cooper
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  2. Zahir Vally
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Correspondence to Peter J. Cooper or Lynne Murray.

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Cooper, P.J., Vally, Z., Cooper, H. et al. Promoting Mother–Infant Book Sharing and Infant Attention and Language Development in an Impoverished South African Population: A Pilot Study. Early Childhood Educ J 42, 143–152 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-013-0591-8

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