CHILDES English Kelly/Quigley/Nixon Corpus

Linda Kelly
School of Psychology
Trinity College Dublin
kellyl11@tcd.ie

Jean Quigley
School of Psychology
Trinity College Dublin
quigleyj@tcd.ie

Elizabeth Nixon
School of Psychology
Trinity College Dublin
enixon@tcd.ie

Participants:	48
Type of Study:	cross-sectional, reading
Location:	Ireland
Media type:	audio
DOI:	doi:10.21415/0CHV-HZ36

Citation information

Kelly, L., Nixon, E., & Quigley, J. (2020). Father-child shared book-reading in light- and heavy-text conditions.

In accordance with TalkBank rules, any use of data from this corpus must be accompanied by at least one of the above references.

Project Description

These are transcripts of shared book-reading interactions between forty-six fathers and their three-year-old children. This study was carried out as part of a larger project on father-child interaction entitled SPROUT: The Significance of the Paternal Relationship for child OUTcomes. The objective of the study for which the current transcript data were collected was to compare the speech produced by father-child dyads assigned to a minimal-text book-reading condition (n = 23) with the speech produced by dyads assigned to a heavy-text book condition (n = 23). Assignment to book-reading condition was randomised. Dyads assigned to the light-text condition read Hug by Jez Alborough whilst dyads assigned to the heavy-text book condition read One Year with Kipper by Mike Inkpen. Both books comprised 16 pages and contained colourful illustrations on each side. According to the publishers, these books were appropriate for children aged 2 – 5 years. The study was carried out between May 2019 and February 2020 in the Infant and Child Research Lab, Trinity College Dublin. Fathers were instructed to read the book to their child as they would a new book at home. The unobtrusive positioning of the wall-mounted cameras in the laboratory play room encouraged naturalistic interactions between father and child. Each transcription relates to a single session of between 4 and 15 continuous minutes where father and child read their assigned book together. Interactions were transcribed from the moment father and child began to engage with the book to the moment they closed the book or when book-related talk ended. All dyads spoke Irish-English.

Participants

Forty-six children aged between 31 to 42 months (20 females; M = 37.89 months, SD = 2.71) and their biological fathers were recruited to take part in the current study. Participants were recruited through social media, flyers distributed to crèches and supermarkets, and snowballing. All children included in the current study were typically developing. Fathers were monolingual, Irish-English speaking, and residing in the family home. Fathers were aged between 25 to 51 years (M = 38.74, SD = 5.74). Almost two-thirds of fathers (65.22%) had a Bachelor’s degree, 28.26% had a Master’s degree, and 2.17% had a doctorate degree. In relation to home book-reading habits, the fathers in this sample on average reported reading to their child at least once a day. Groups created by random assignment did not differ significantly on sociodemographic factors or fathers’ home-reading habits.