Interactive shared book reading – particularly when parents engage in decontextualized talk which goes beyond the here-and-now – is an evidenced-based approach to promote preschool-aged children's engagement with a story and emergent literacy. Parental training of interactive reading often involves an experienced clinician or researcher who can provide personalized, “in-the-moment” instruction. Although such methods are highly effective, they are expensive and time-intensive, often limiting participation by busy parents. Here, we extend this approach through a digital tool designed to encourage dyadic interaction during shared book reading via a conversational agent (CA). In this paper, we describe the results of a one-month usability test of the app with N = 20 parents and their 3-to-5-year-old children. The app first provided parents with information on interactive reading strategies. During reading, it used AI technology to deliver interactive prompts aimed at promoting decontextualized conversation. Parent-child conversation while reading with the CA was nearly double that of conversation when reading without the CA. Approximately one month later, parent and child talk while reading with CA remained high. Additional analyses indicated that parents most often expanded on the CA's prompts rather than repeating them, thereby eliciting more verbal responses from children. Results indicate that CAs have the potential to enrich dyadic interactions around print books in ways known to promote children's early literacy abilities. Future directions around the scalability and efficacy of CA technologies to augment literacy practices are discussed. © 2024 Elsevier B.V.

This study examined whether variation in parent-child conversations about scientific processes can be explained by child gender and the science-related resources available to parents, known as scientific capital. Parents of 4- and 5-year-old children (N = 70) from across the United States completed a survey of science capital and were then videotaped with their children at home interacting with two science activities (i.e., balance scale and circuit toy). Videos were transcribed and analyzed for parents' science process language. Results indicated that parents' science process language occurred significantly more often during conversations with boys, among families with higher levels of scientific capital, and during the scale activity. Gender differences in science process language were not apparent at higher levels of science capital and during the scale activity. These effects speak to the need for measuring child, family, and contextual characteristics when identifying factors that promote children's early science engagement and learning. Results are discussed in terms of future interventions that could build scientific capital as a means to counteract stereotypes around gender and science. (c) 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Word learning encompasses the understanding of interconnected clusters of words, where the comprehension of one word aids in the learning of another. Semantic networks, which have a long history in cognitive science, are commonly employed to explore these semantic relationships. However, limited research has been conducted on adults’ use of semantically relevant conversations in the field of early childhood education, and there is insufficient information regarding contextual factors influencing the development of semantic networks. The present study investigated the extent to which the use and effectiveness of semantically relevant conversations vary across activity contexts. This study analyzed data from the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development (HSLLD) Corpus available in the CHILDES database, focusing on a subset of 62 children. This study utilized four statistical features to describe the structure of semantic networks: short path length, diameter, density, and clustering coefficient. The following findings emerged: (1) Book reading displayed a significantly greater diameter than toy play and mealtime, indicating that there exist specific pairs of concepts or words within its semantic networks that are notably more distant from each other than in the other two activity settings. (2) Toy play exhibited a significantly greater density in comparison to book reading and mealtime, suggesting a higher degree of overlap or interdependence among the concepts within its semantic networks. (3) Book reading demonstrated a significantly greater clustering coefficient compared to toy play and mealtime, signifying the existence of cohesive word communities or groups of words characterized by dense internal connections. (4) Adults’ use of semantically relevant conversations during book reading was positively associated with children’s lexical diversity. © 2023 by the authors.