Shared Book Reading at Home and Preschoolers’ Socio-emotional Competence

Research Finding: The study aimed to explore the relations between the natural process of parents’ and children’s general and socio-emotional discourse during and following shared book reading (SBR) interactions at home and preschoolers’ socio-emotional competence (causes of emotion; empathy; prosocial attitude; and social coherence). Results showed that parents’ socio-emotional utterances (e.g. reference to the characters’ feelings) explained all the assessed socio-emotional outcomes. Parents’ general utterances (e.g. description of the characters’ appearance) explained empathy and social coherence. Children’s socio-emotional and general utterances during the SBRs explained all of their assessed socio-emotional outcomes, except causes of emotions. controlling for family SES, children’s age, and children’s language level. Practice or Policy: Daily SBR interactions serve as a repeated opportunity for parents to discuss socio-emotional issues with their children. Children’s active participation in the conversation supports their understanding of others. The results can contribute to the development of SBR intervention programs for both parents and educators. The programs should focus on the book’s general, as well as socio-emotional context with repeated SBR to promote preschool’s socio- emotional competence.