Research tracks impact of open-ended questions
Utah State University junior Cherri Holbrook, a family human development major, was one of the researchers who took part in the Posters on the Hill display at the Capitol building last week.
Holbrook said her research was part of a project for Early Headstart involving children’s vocabularies.
“The focus was to see if children whose parents repeatedly asked open-ended questions during book readings have a larger vocabulary than those children who don’t,” Holbrook said.
Holbrook said two categories of open-ended questions are requesting a label, and requesting other information, such as color of an object.
According to the study, data was collected from 201 low-income families who applied for Early Headstart, and involved both mothers and fathers. Videotaped observations were done at 24 and 36 months in the child’s home, separately with the fathers and the mothers.
Holbrook said at 24 and 36 months, the MacArthur CDI vocabulary test was used to test toddler vocabulary, and portions of the Bayley Mental Development Index were used to assess overall language.
Then, at 36 months, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test was used to assess the receptive vocabulary of the toddlers.
“The results were that open-ended questions at 24 months were related to higher scores for their vocabulary and language, and higher scores for language at 36 months,” Holbrook said.
According to the study, however, book-reading behaviors were only weakly related to children’s language measures.
The study conclusively found that early book reading is better because the correlation is the strongest at younger ages between questions asked during book reading and vocabulary and language development.
According to the study, “This finding indicates the need to promote language and vocabulary development early, which in turn, can lead to increased literacy from book reading; beginning at age 2 or earlier.”