Mother–Child Interactions During Shared Reading With Digital and Print Books

Abstract

This study explored the quality of interactions in mother–child shared reading with a print book and with an electronic book on an i-Pad. The study involved a Turkish mother and her 5-year-old son who were observed at home when reading the printed book Ay’ı kim çaldı? (Who stole the moon?) and its exact digital match. The shared book reading interactions were analysed in terms of (a) the amount of talk with the different book formats and (b) the content of the mother–child talk including the focus of the talk, expansion of ideas and behavioural-related talk. The results revealed that print book reading engaged the child in higher-level thinking compared to digital book reading. There was greater frequency of non-immediate talk in the print book reading compared to the digital book reading. Also, results suggested that the digital book encouraged more behaviour-related talk related to negotiating the book sharing routine.