Sharing a book with babies and toddlers promotes early language development and vocabulary. But handing them a screen probably won’t.
To examine the association between shared book reading, daily screen time, and vocabulary size, Norwegian researchers asked 1,442 parents of one-year and two-year-old children about their kids’ daily screen time and how often they read to their children. In addition, the parents also reported how many words their kids said or understood.
Kids who were frequently read to had bigger expressive and receptive vocabularies. There was a negative association between increased daily screen time and expressive vocabulary in two-year-olds.
The relation between shared reading and vocabulary development in one-year-olds was even stronger in families of lower socio-economic status, suggesting that shared reading could potentially mitigate the disparity in early language development.
“These findings emphasise the importance of promoting shared book reading and potentially limiting screen time in early childhood for optimal language development and are generally in line with current recommendations from the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics,” the study published in the Journal of Child Language concluded.