ELEFANT

• The narrative skills of a child in oral and written form are important prerequisites for successful academic development and unrestricted participation in society. Systematic language support provided during primary school often comes too late to fully compensate for the consequences of an early language development disorder. Nonetheless, no adequate possibilities to promote these skills are currently at hand to be implemented at out-of-home care establishments such as day-care centers prior to school entry. Therefore, within the framework of the ELEFANT project, researchers are investigating the extent to which children can be effectively prepared for school through a combined digital intervention targeting phonological awareness and narrative skills. The corresponding intervention study especially focuses on the individual support of at-risk children.
• The current study conducts a comparative investigation with three groups of children, one of whom participates at an interactive and individual tablet-assisted narrative promotion program consisting of 24 sessions over a period of 12 weeks (intervention group), while the other two groups either get to listen to research assistant reading stories out loud regularly (control group 1) or just follow the standard day-care curriculum (control group 2). Following three measurement points, the study assesses children’s intelligence as well as phonological awareness, vocabulary, and narrative skills. Positive effects of the intervention on language development are expected, particularly for disadvantaged children.

• Within the context of the current research on the effects of a combined promotion of phonological awareness and narrative skills of preschool children, the following research questions are investigated:

1. Do children benefit from a standardized, systematic and individualized intervention aimed at promoting emergent literacy and narrative skills to a greater extent than children who get to listen to stories read out loud regularly or receive the standard language support provided within the day-care center’s regular curriculum?

2. Do children who are classified as at-risk because of their family background or because of difficulties in their speech development benefit proportionally more from an individually adapted intervention compared to children who are not considered at-risk?

• The answers to these questions could pave the way to a systematic implementation of differential language support measures which could, due to digitalization, be used in kindergartens despite the ongoing lack of qualified educational staff.

María Valcárcel Jiménez

maria.valcarcel@psy.lmu.de

+49 (0) 89 2180-17805