Does Shared Reading Promote Cognitive Development? A Literature Review

Shared reading is recognized as an educational method that promotes language development and emergent literacy during early childhood. However, growing evidence suggests that it influences additional developmental domains. This review examined empirical and theoretical literature with the aim of uncovering the potential of shared reading as an inclusive pedagogical approach for supporting children’s cognitive development by integrating findings on adult mediation, dialogic interaction, repeated reading, mental state discourse, instructional adaptations, and shared reading across diverse learner populations. The reviewed literature indicates that the effectiveness of shared reading depends primarily on the quality of the adult–child interaction. Adult mediation, instructional scaffolding, collaborative dialogue, and active child participation were found to be key instruments for supporting learning across home, preschool, and inclusive educational settings. Studies involving children with developmental disabilities, autism spectrum disorder, deafness, and deafblindness indicate that adapted shared reading promotes participation and advances language, communication, and broader developmental outcomes. Significant conceptual, methodological, and population-related gaps were found. Furthermore, few studies examined the contribution of shared reading to higher-order cognitive processes, such as executive functions, metacognition, inferential reasoning, cognitive flexibility, and critical thinking. Research on culturally and linguistically diverse populations, particularly Arabic-speaking learners, is also limited. This review proposes a reconceptualization of shared reading as an inclusive cognitive pedagogy in which adult mediation, dialogic interaction, instructional scaffolding, and collaborative meaning-making together promote children’s cognitive engagement and higher-order thinking.