Study: Preschool Early Learning

What is this study about?

  • We want to know what helps children learn language and early literacy during the preschool years.

Who was in this study?

  • Children who are 4 and 5 years of age.

What did we learn?

  • So far we have results for two studies. Watch for more!

Study 1: Milburn, T. F., & Chan, A. (in preparation). Factoring decontextualized conversations in the home literacy environment.

What is this study about? When parents complete a survey about the kinds of things that they do with their children do at home (e.g., book reading), do their answers represent one kind of interaction or more than one?

What did you learn? We learned that our survey represented 4 things:

  1. Book reading

  2. Teaching children about print and sounds in words

  3. What parents do when having conversations with their children

  4. How often parents talk about things that are not currently happening (e.g., past events).

Study 2: Milburn, T. F. & Zhang, Y. (in preparation). Children's use of literate language.

What is this study about? When children create stories from wordless picture books, do they include the language of books? Are there any differences in children’s age? Are the differences that exist in the way that children tell stories related to their language abilities and their ability to manage their own behaviour and avoid distractions?

What did you learn? We will be posting our results soon. Stay tuned!