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“Time for a Story” – Joint Book-Reading

Joint book-reading is an interactive routine with reported benefits for child language development. This study examined communicative behaviours in two different groups of mother-child dyads during joint book-reading; one group consisting of children with typical development and the other group consisting of children with Down Syndrome. Some differences in communicative behaviours were observed between the two groups. The children with Down Syndrome displayed responsiveness in interaction as well as initiation skills. Their mothers were as responsive to their child’s behaviours as the mothers of the typically developing children. However, they displayed lower use of positive reinforcement, and used labelling, description, directives and attentional markers with greater frequency. On the other hand, many behaviours were used with broadly comparable frequencies by both groups – including questioning and expansions. One finding of the present study was a large variance in the communicative behaviours of different dyads. Findings and implications are discussed.