A multicenter study (19 clinical sites in 10 different states) that compared 730 children aged 6 to 72 months exposed to the ROR model with a comparison group of 917 matched children who did not participate in this literacy promoting model found significant associations between exposure to ROR and reading aloud as a favorite parent activity (adjusted OR 1.6, P < 0.001); reading aloud at bedtime (adjusted OR 1.5, P < 0.001); reading aloud 3 or more days per week (adjusted OR 1.8, P < 0.001); and ownership of 10 or more picture books (adjusted OR 1.6, P < 0.001) [31].
Across the world, others have been replicating and testing the ROR model. Interestingly, studies conducted in Taiwan and with immigrants from Latin America and Asia have all shown similar effects on parental literacy behaviors and on the development of children’s early oral language skills [32–35].
Parent-Child Bonding from Sharing Books
According to the 2014 AAP policy statement, literacy promotion is an essential component of pediatric primary care [3]. The statement emphasizes that parent-child shared reading is a “very personal and nurturing experience that promotes parent-child interaction, social-emotional development, and language and literacy skills during this critical period of early brain and child development.” It recognizes the importance of shared reading as a bonding experience that could start in early infancy. These early nurturing relationships are critical to promoting healthy child development [36].
Most studies of practice-based literacy promotion have asked parents what their favorite things are to do with their child. All of these studies have shown that parents who have received guidance around the importance of reading together and high-quality books to share with their infants, toddlers, and preschoolers include reading aloud as one of their 3 most favorite activities, compared to control families who did not receive this intervention [28–31]. When activities are favorites, they are enriched by this shared enjoyment and are far more likely to occur often and perhaps become treasured family routines. Children’s books and early play and discussions around the themes in these books stimulate increased interaction between caregivers and children [37]. These interactions build secure relationships that are key to children’s healthy cognitive, language, and social-emotional development [38–40].
The Effects on the Brain From Listening to Stories
In a recent study, 48 children aged 6 to 11 years were classified as early talkers (16), on-time talkers (16), or late talkers (16) by parental report [41]. Group assignments were based on whether the parent recalled their child making 2- to 3-word sentences early, on-time, or late. None of the “early talkers” had spoken their first sentences after 24 months, and none of the “late talkers” had spoken sentences before age 2. Utilizing functional MRI, researchers analyzed talker group differences in processing of speech and print and functional activation differences on auditory stimuli and when visualizing print. The groups were matched by age, gender, and performance IQ. This study showed strong group differences in the activation of several regions of the brain, including the left superior temporal gyrus, left putamen, globus pallidus, right putamen, left insula, and thalamus. In each of these areas, late talkers demonstrated significantly less activation that early talkers in both speech and print conditions ( P < 0.001). Talker group status was strongly related to neural activation patterns during simple linguistic tasks. These cortical differences in activation are consistent with other studies that demonstrate the role of these regions in understanding speech [42] and processing print [43,44]. These findings highlight the importance of early language development on the formation of critical language and reading circuits and how these neural pathways are affected many years later [41].