From the Hasbro Children’s Hospital/Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University, Providence, RI.
Abstract
- Objective: To describe current knowledge about the effects of promoting literacy and early language development in young children.
- Methods: Review of the literature.
- Results: Children who are exposed to literacy-promoting interventions in their pediatricians’ offices are more likely to be read to frequently by their caregivers and have improved language skills when compared to children who are not. Language disparities can have life-long consequences that are particularly important in children from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. The power of the intervention may lie in the fact that it begins in a parent's lap and helps build strong and nurturing parent-child relationships as well as language skills.
- Conclusion: Pediatric providers are in a unique position to positively influence a child’s life course by promoting literacy starting at birth.
Over the past few decades, pediatric providers and parents have been inundated with information about the importance of reading to children, starting at a young age. In fact, a national organization, Reach Out and Read (ROR), has been promoting this idea for the past 25 years. ROR began in 1989 at Boston City Hospital when it was noticed that the books brought in by staff for the pediatric waiting room area were disappearing. Pediatricians and staff members realized that this was likely the result of a lack of children’s books in homes of disadvantaged children, and they decided to provide quality children’s books and guidance about reading with young children as a component of their primary care [1,2]. Since then, ROR has proliferated, with now over 5000 sites throughout the nation. Millions of children between the ages of 6 months and 5 years are given books by their pediatricians at every well child visit. Their parents receive anticipatory guidance about the benefits and joys of reading aloud to their children.
Most pediatricians trained in the past 10 to 15 years cannot imagine a visit that will not include giving a book to a child and talking to his or her parents about the benefits of sharing books together. This practice was reinforced when in 2014 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement making literacy promotion in pediatric practice the standard of care [3]. In this paper, we review the data supporting early literacy promoting interventions and the role that pediatricians have in improving children’s literacy environments. We also discuss the ROR model as well as the impact of electronic media on children’s language skills.
Early Brain Development and Literacy Interventions
About 90% of brain growth occurs before the age of 5. In the first year of life, the brain triples in volume and there is a dramatic increase in the number of synapses. As many as 700 new neural connections are formed every second, and the number grows exponentially from 50 trillion at birth to 1000 trillion by the time of the child’s first birthday. This period of rapid proliferation is followed by a phase of synaptic retraction or “pruning,” so that brain circuits become more efficient. The time course for synaptic “blooming and pruning” varies by brain region. Overproduction in the sensory pathways like those for basic vision and hearing peaks at about the 4th postnatal month and is followed by a gradual retraction that occurs until the middle-end of the preschool period. A similar pattern is observed in areas of the brain that govern development of early language skills but with a somewhat later time course observed, peaking at about 9 months, followed by decline and stabilization in the preschool years. The prefrontal cortex, involved in higher cognitive functions, is the last to develop, reaching a peak overproduction in synapses by age 1, and it is not until late adolescence to early adulthood that a more streamlined density of synapses is obtained [4,5].