Brief Interventions Influence the Quantity and Quality of Caregiver-Child Conversations in an Everyday Context

Abstract

Reading and arithmetic are difficult cognitive feats for children to master and youth from low-income communities are often less “school ready” in terms of letter and number recognition skills (Lee and Burkam, 2002). One way to prepare children for school is by encouraging caregivers to engage children in conversations about academically-relevant concepts by using numbers, recognizing shapes, and naming colors (Levine et al., 2010; Fisher et al., 2013). Previous research shows that caregiver-child conversations about these topics rarely take place in everyday contexts (Hassinger-Das et al., 2018), but interventions designed to encourage such conversations, like displaying signs in a grocery store, have resulted in significant increases in caregiver-child conversations (Ridge et al., 2015; Hanner et al., 2019). We investigated whether a similar brief intervention could change caregiver-child conversations in an everyday context. We observed 212 families in a volunteer-run facility where people who are food-insecure can select food from available donations. Volunteers greet all the clients as they pass through the aisles, offer food, and restock the shelves as needed. About 25% of the clients have children with them and our data consist of observations of the caregiver-child conversations with 2- to 10-year-old children. Half of the observation days consisted of a baseline condition in which the quantity and quality of caregiver-child conversation was observed as the client went through aisles where no signs were displayed, and volunteers merely greeted the clients. The other half of the observation days consisted of a brief intervention where signs were displayed (signs-up condition), where, volunteers greeted the clients and pointed out that there were signs displayed to entertain the children if they were interested. In addition, there was a within-subject manipulation for the intervention condition where each family interacted with two different categories of signs. Half of the signs had academically-relevant content and the other half had non-academically-relevant content. The results demonstrate that the brief intervention used in the signs-up condition increases the quantity of conversation between a caregiver and child. In addition, signs with academically-relevant content increases the quality of the conversation. These findings provide further evidence that brief interventions in an everyday context can change the caregiver-child conversation. Specifically, signs with academically-relevant content may promote school readiness.

Parent-Focused Interventions to Support Children’s Early Math Learning

“…1d). Similarly, when signs emphasizing conversations about number, color, and shape were placed around a food pantry in the Midwest of the United States, adults shopping with children engaged in significantly more talk about these academically relevant topics compared to when signs emphasized non-academic topics (Shivaram et al, 2021). However, to date studies have only shown that prompting parents to engage in such conversations indeed leads to increases in math conversations.…”

Minor changes, big differences? Effects of manipulating play materials on parental math talk.

“…Findings on the importance of parental math talk have generated interest in identifying ways of increasing both its quantity and quality. One approach used in this experimental work is to explicitly direct parent’s attention to the opportunities for discussing math with children (e.g., Braham et al, 2018; Eason & Ramani, 2020) and to scaffold their interactions with prompts or guidance (e.g., Hanner et al, 2019; Shivaram et al, 2021; Vandermaas-Peeler et al, 2012; Vandermass-Peeler, Ferretti, & Loving, 2012). For instance, Hanner et al (2019) placed signs in grocery stores prompting 2-to-5-year-olds’ parents to talk about math and providing math-related questions they could ask (e.g., How many glasses of milk do you drink in a day?).…”

Reinventing the public square and early educational settings through culturally informed, community co-design: Playful Learning Landscapes

“…Indeed, in Philadelphia, members of the community became part of the scientific team to research the impact of the installations on caregiver-child behavior and child outcomes (Hassinger-Das et al, 2020. Evaluation of PLLs in previous work reveals that PLL outcomes are measurable and align with our goals of increasing adult-child interaction quality and language use, building positive attitudes and beliefs about playful learning, 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.933320 encouraging ownership of local spaces, and increasing civic engagement (Ridge et al, 2015;Hanner et al, 2019;Bustamante et al, 2020;Hassinger-Das et al, 2020;Gaudreau et al, 2021;Shivaram et al, 2021).…”