Early Parent—Child Interactions and Early Literacy Development

The relationship between parent—child interactions and early literacy skills for 27 families living in low-income households was examined. Parent—child interactions in “simulated” daily experiences were videotaped when the children were 14, 24, and 36 months old. These tapes were coded with the Parent-Infant/Toddler Interaction Coding System (PICS; Dodici & Draper, 2001), a scale that rates child language, parent language, emotional tone, joint attention, parental guidance, and parental responsivity. These behaviors were related strongly to early literacy skills in the areas of receptive vocabulary, symbolic representation, and phonemic analysis, which were measured in the spring prior to kindergarten entry. In addition, observed parent—child interactions were better predictors of early literacy skills than was a parent report of home literacy experiences.