Abstract
Shared book-reading is an evidence-based way to support young children’s oral language and literacy development, yet less research has focused on its socio-emotional benefits. As part of a larger book-sharing approach called Tender Shoots, we created a module called Rich Reading and Reminiscing (RRR) to help parents share books with preschoolers (3 to 5 years) in greater depth, focusing on mental-state talk, socio-emotional understanding, and links to the children’s lives. One year after participating in RRR, parents and children continued to use more mental-state talk during shared book-reading compared to dyads in control groups. However, parent–child mental-state talk during shared book-reading was no longer positively correlated with children’s socio-emotional skills, in contrast to earlier findings in the preschool phase of the project. Shared book-reading can be used to promote conversations rich in mental-state talk, but the conditions under which this talk benefits children’s socio-emotional skills are not yet understood.