Reach Every Reader Project

Reach Every Reader is a collaborative effort between the Early Learning Lab at UNC Chapel Hill, Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Florida Center for Reading Research. It is supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

One notable project of this collaboration is the R.E.A.D.Y. Early Literacy App, a pioneering initiative dedicated to empowering parents and educators in fostering strong literacy skills in pre-readers. Developed in collaboration with leading academic institutions including Harvard and MIT, this project integrates cutting-edge technology with evidence-based practices to enhance book reading interactions and everyday conversations between adults and children.

Through a combination of resources and an AI-integrated Read Aloud with Floppy portion, the app supports adult capacity building, focusing on dialogic reading strategies proven to contribute to early literacy skills. Research papers and posters showcase the triadic interaction among parents, children, and the virtual agent Floppy, as well as the app’s usability and impact on parent-child conversation during shared book reading sessions. Floppy has demonstrated remarkable results, boasting a 67% increase in engagement and a 32% boost in children’s literacy. These percentages highlight the effectiveness of the R.E.A.D.Y. Early Literacy App in enhancing parent-child interactions and fostering early literacy skills.

The project delves into the natural interactions between parents and children facilitated by Floppy, evaluating its effectiveness in modeling dialogic reading strategies and enhancing shared reading experiences. Research papers authored by members of the collaborative team explore various aspects of the app’s functionality and impact, presenting findings at prestigious academic conferences.

The NSF BCSER Project

With grant funding from the National Science Foundation, we are interested in exploring the relationship between STEM language in parent-child interactions and children’s science inquiry. During early childhood, parents play an essential role in children’s science learning through conversations about scientific processes. Some research has shown that these conversations occur at different rates among boys and girls, with parents talking about science more with boys.

This phenomenon can exacerbate the underrepresentation of women in STEM and is thus given special attention in our research. Beyond gender, we are curious how parent questions, including close-ended questions and open-ended questions, and children’s subsequent responses are associated with children’s science inquiry scores. Family science capital is another key variable that we consider in relation to children’s science inquiry. Understanding the relationship between these variables is critical in developing interventions to boost scientific process language in daily parent-child conversations and increase the participation of underrepresented groups in STEM.

The BEE Project

Our project, in collaboration with the Brain and Early Experience (BEE) Lab at UNC Chapel Hill, aims to explore the intricate relationship between parental linguistic input, brain development, and language outcomes in young children. Leveraging cutting-edge neuroimaging techniques and the Language Environment Analysis (LENA) technology, we seek to uncover the mechanisms underlying socioeconomic disparities in language acquisition, providing insights crucial for targeted interventions to support children’s language development.

We utilize state-of-the-art neuroimaging technology, including diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and resting-state functional MRI (rs-fMRI), to capture specific structural and functional brain networks associated with language development. By examining brain regions critical for language processing, such as the left frontal and temporal cortices, we aim to elucidate how variations in parental language input shape early brain structure and function.

While the importance of parental language input in children’s language development is well-established, our study seeks to delve deeper into how variations in input quality, particularly among families from different socioeconomic backgrounds, influence brain development. By analyzing both automated estimates and manually coded measures of parental input, we aim to determine the reliability of existing technologies and identify additional qualities of input that contribute to language acquisition.