An Exploratory Analysis of 4-Month-Old Infants’ Behaviours Towards Picture Books in the Bookstart Programme Context

An Exploratory Analysis of 4-Month-Old Infants’ Behaviours Towards Picture Books in the Bookstart Programme Context

Infant behaviours were observed for 261, 4-month-old infants when they attended the Bookstart programme. Infant behaviours in this context were analysed in relation to child characteristics, such as gender, temperament, and birth order, and also in relation to the infant’s home book-reading environment (i.e., frequency of parental book reading and parental attitudes toward books). Gender differences were found in infants’ looking behaviours in the Bookstart programme context. When infant gender, birth order, and parents’ familiarity with the Bookstart programme were controlled for, relationships were also found between the way infants attended to the book that was displayed and read by a reader in this study and infant temperament, and frequency of book reading experience in the home. The implications of early individual differences in the book-related behaviours observed in this study’s context are discussed in relation to infant attention development and how early picture book related behaviour might affect the overall development of emergent literacy.