Peer-reviewed article
Association between early childhood development and shared play and reading
Shamyr Sulyvan de Castro, Márcia Maria Tavares Machado, Simone Farías-Antúnez, Anyelle Barroso Saldanha, Sophia Costa Vasconcelos et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study examined whether shared play and reading between parents and young children is associated with better development across multiple domains. Researchers followed mothers and babies born in July-August 2020 in the IRACEMA-Covid cohort and measured child development at age 2 using caregiver reports. Shared play and reading were associated with better outcomes not only in language but also in cognition, motor skills, socio-emotional development, and overall development. The findings suggest that promoting shared play and reading in child intervention programs could be beneficial.
Key points
- Shared play and reading were associated with language development (0.81 on CREDI scale)
- Same activities were associated with cognition (0.62), motor (0.69), and socio-emotional (0.80) development
- Overall child development was better when families engaged in shared play and reading (0.75)
- Study used caregiver-reported data on parental/family interaction and child development
- Findings suggest shared play and reading has benefits across multiple developmental domains, not just language
Limitations
The study used self-reported data on parental interaction and caregiver-reported child development measures, which may be subject to recall bias and reporter bias. The cross-sectional design cannot establish causation, only associations, and data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic may have affected family routines.
Abstract
The impact of shared parental/family interaction on domains of early childhood development beyond language is unclear. We investigate the association between parental/family interaction (through shared reading/playing) and early childhood development at age 2. We used data from the 4th wave of a cohort following mothers and babies born between July and August 2020, named IRACEMA-Covid. Information on parental/family interaction was self-reported, and domains of child development were measured using the Caregiver Reported Early Development Instrument (CREDI). Descriptive statistics were performed using means and standard deviations. Inferential analyses were conducted using x2, Kruskal-Wallis, and crude and adjusted linear regression models. Family/parental interaction, as represented by playing/reading together, was associated with better development not only in language (0.81), as measured by CREDI, but also in cognition (0.62), motor (0.69), socio-emotional (0.80), and overall (0.75) domains. The results suggest that promoting shared play and reading in child intervention programs would be beneficial.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Shared play and reading between parents/family and young children
- Population
- Mothers and babies born July-August 2020, measured at age 2, from IRACEMA-Covid cohort
Key finding
Shared play and reading associated with language development (0.81)