Shared book reading is an act when an adult reads a story book to a child or group of children. Parental reading, picture explanation, character and event discussions, and application of book content to real-world situations are all components of SBR (Saracho, 2017). The act of shared book reading is important owing to the fact that there is increased evidence regarding the impact of shared reading on language development and early literacy skills of children. The research done in this aspect reveals that the children tend to exhibit a better understanding of print and meaning while engaging in shared reading with their caregivers or educators. Shared book reading is used by both typically developing children and those with speech and language disorders. Benefits of shared book reading includes development of early language skills, vocabulary development, dialogic reading, development of triadic attention, print and phonological awareness, and grammatical development. The concept of shared book reading can be emulated to the children with disability, wherein a pressing need for early communication development is prevailing. One such population which requires immediate intervention is Autism Spectrum Disorders. Shared book reading can be used to improve the triadic attention of the child to the caretaker and the book. It can boost language development in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The use of these foundational skills will help children with Autism Spectrum Disorder to be successful readers. The research also focuses on the effect of shared book reading on early language skills including vocabulary growth, print awareness, narration and conversation skills, phonological awareness, and future reading ability. SBR also focuses on vocabulary development and dialogic reading which in turn helps in language development.

Factors affecting shared book reading are as follows: type of book used, child’s attention, caregiver reading quality and repeated reading. The shared book reading in the current study was based on scripted and unscripted story books. The scripted story books are the one with written descriptions while unscripted story books are those that do not have a prescribed script or description. The textual properties of books may differentially influence the quantity and quality of parents’ language and, hence, differentially relate to children’s language outcomes. There is evidence that provides the importance of exposing children to a “varied diet” of book genre and type as each can have a distinct impact on children’s language and early literacy skills (Pappas, 2006). Both alphabet and rhyming books can promote children’s emergent literacy skills such as letter identification and phonological awareness (e.g., Murphy et al., 2022). Exposure to narrative books is an effective means through which children can acquire comprehension strategies (Lynch & van den Broek, 2007). Wordless picture books may provide unique advantages to language development as they facilitate discourse between caregiver and child. Comparisons of SBR with text-based and wordless picture books indicate that teachers ask more questions and more actively encourage child participation in narrative co-construction and children in turn produce more utterances during wordless picture book episodes (Schick et al., 2021).

There are different ways in which SBR has been studied in literature among them visual attention, verbal engagement and parental behaviors, and emergent literacy (Wicks et al. 2020) were utilized. The visual attention refers to visual gaze directed towards the book, parent and elsewhere for at least 2 seconds. The verbal engagements were analyzed by using a modified version of Son and Tineo’s 2016 coding scheme. The behaviors were coded based on Wicks et al.’s study as Not engaged or Fully engaged. The behaviors of the children assessed includes total child utterances, utterances in response to parent, text reading, spontaneous utterances, story inference, and story description. The parental behavior investigated by the researcher includes total parent utterances, use of book language, use of questions and use of prompts. Language boosting behaviors including incidents of turn taking, head direction, caregiver’s speech act and caregiver’s speech act responses and the engagement coding was done using the Leuven Scale of Active Engagement (Laevers, 2008). Lingwood et al., (2022) viewed shared book reading as a ‘transactional framework’ in which the caregiver and child are operating as a community of practice (CofP) which involves three dimensions including mutual engagement, a joint enterprise and shared repertoire. Visual attention and verbal interaction during SBR are components of joint attention known to facilitate emergent literacy learning for TD preschool-age children (Wicks et al., 2020). The emergent literacy was researched using receptive vocabulary and alphabet knowledge. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-4; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) was used as a measure of children’s receptive vocabulary while alphabet knowledge was assessed using a letter-name subtest from the Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening for Preschoolers (PALS-PreK; Invernizzi et al., 2004). Shared book reading in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder enhances specific social communication skills that are an integral part of their intervention. While indulging in Shared book reading children with Autism Spectrum Disorder tend to demonstrate an understanding of behavior and social skills that can improve their quality of life. Studies show that caregivers who engage in shared reading activities and who are asking questions and commenting on the text while reading with their children improved the participation of their children in the SBR task (Fleury et al., 2021). The study by Fleury et al. in 2021 states that children with Autism Spectrum Disorder will require strategies in shared book reading tasks to support social communication and emergent literacy skill development (e.g., vocabulary knowledge, language comprehension) that are specifically linked to future reading comprehension. The intervention studies on SBR reveals that the children on the spectrum demonstrate progress in communicative acts (Akemoglu Y, Tomeny KR.2021). In the study by Wicks et al. in 2020 on parental behaviors on children with Autism Spectrum Disorder reveals the child demonstrated a range of print-and meaning-related SBR behaviors without focusing on scripts.

Poor language skills in the early years can have long-lasting impact on the child (Hoff, 2013; Pace, Alper, Burchinal, Golinkoff, & Hirsh-Pasek, 2018). Shared book reading has an positive impact on increasing the amount and content of children’s conversations, thereby enhancing early language development. SBR contributes to meaning comprehension and production in human communication (Reyes, 2007). Reading increases the variety of vocabulary and extends the extratextual sentences that children become able to produce (Hammett et al., 2003). SBR may foster important communicative abilities in children, such as phonological awareness, narrative and conversation skills, grammatical development, print awareness, dialogic reading, future reading ability speech fluency, and connections with previous knowledge, that together establish the basis for language comprehension and vocabulary acquisition (Suárez et al., 2018).

The current study aimed at exploring different aspects of visual attention and verbal engagement of children with language age of 2–4 years on the autism spectrum during SBR and the SBR behaviors of their parents while using scripted and unscripted story books. The type of book selected for SBR has been an important factor in determining the success of this specific technique as an intervention strategy. This article is a preliminary effort in exploring the effect of book type on SBR. The results of this study indicated that the type of book selected for shared book reading has an effect on visual attention, verbal engagement of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and parental SBR behavior. Shared book reading is an important task that also helps in building parent-child interaction and increase the vocabulary of the child.

Visual attention: The first objective was comparing visual attention during shared book reading using scripted and unscripted books in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Visual attention during shared book reading utilizing scripted and unscripted story books did not change noticeably when we compared it to attention directed at the book, parent, and other objects. Children exhibited limited instances of coordinated joint attention, in which most children rarely looked toward the parent either while they or the parent spoke throughout the SBR session (Adamson et al., 2009). The choice of book does not seem to affect the reader’s focus on the task at hand. The situational level variables of book type and overall quality of the adult’s book reading for that book best explained the percentage of time a kid spent jointly engaged in the book-reading with their caregiver (Veronica et.al 2018). The amount of time spent in passive interaction was positively correlated with children’s cognitive abilities. In other words, younger children were seen gazing away from the book or at the caregiver more often than older children. This research identifies a specific group of people who may be most at risk for reading failure and who will probably need additional help and training to participate in shared reading and reap its benefits. Wicks et al. 2022 suggest that engaging children with ASD in SBR with digital storybooks and prompting children with ASD to look at print and pictures during SBR may be helpful in facilitating joint attention to storybook content.

Verbal engagement: The verbal engagement of children with autism spectrum disorder during shared book reading of scripted and unscripted books is evaluated based on total child utterances, total verbal engagement, spontaneous utterances, utterances during reading, text reading, story description, and story inferences. The child utterances were reported to be higher in scripted story books than in unscripted story books when verbal engagement was examined. Most of the child utterances were nouns. Some children were fully engaged in shared book reading using scripted and unscripted story books while the others did not show any noticeable difference in total verbal engagement. The results in the current research was inline with the finding of Saracho & Spodek, 2010 that verbal engagement in children includes labeling and describing the aspects and content of the story whereas the children demonstrated limited text reading.

Story inference during shared book reading using scripted and unscripted books were exhibited by a few children while others did not show any story inference. The children who engage in story inference were able to express their views in one to word utterances. Other characteristics include few utterances related to story inference despite parent facilitation, with a large number scoring zero for this indicator which was novel and may provide insight into what aspects of SBR engagement to target in interventions to support children’s story comprehension.

When engaging in SBR from both scripted and unscripted storybooks, there is no discernible difference in the utterances made during reading, text reading, or story description. Given the aptitude for comprehending that people with ASD have for this genre, using nonfiction or informational texts during group reading activities may be a crucial factor. Fictional stories often have strong social undertones that force readers to adopt the viewpoint of the main characters. For many kids with ASD, understanding fictional literature requires the capacity to draw conclusions and adopt other people’s viewpoints (Baron-Cohen et al., 1997). Nonfiction informational writings are thought to be easier for people with ASD to comprehend since they have less social content and rely more on generic knowledge (Brown et al. 2013).

Children responded to parent queries and prompts with the most utterances, as expected by the researcher and the literature study. For both children with language disorders and children on the spectrum (Fleury & Schwartz, 2017; Tipton et al., 2017), questions and prompts during SBR are a well-known turn-taking method used by parents to elicit and promote child engagement and response.

Parental behaviors during shared book reading: The overall quantity of parental utterances, the use of book language, and the use of prompts and questions are among the parental SBR behaviors that were examined. Total parent utterances during shared book reading for unscripted books are higher than those for scripted books when we compare the parent SBR behaviors. When analyzing the parental language used during the scripted storybooks, the words and sentence structure used mostly resembles the language depicted in books.

When compared to the scripted book, maternal speech production in the wordless condition was significantly different. Mothers produced more language and new utterances in the wordless condition than in the worded condition.

While participating in both tasks, the parents frequently make comments and utterances that are behavioral directives, demonstrating that these kinds of utterances may not always be related to book style. Such language may in reality reflect parents’ general inclination to discipline kids (e.g., by telling them to “sit down”) and praise them (e.g., by saying things like “good job”). Parental language use during SBR has similar findings by Mirela Conica et al., (2023).

In this study, we expected that mothers of children with ASD would use more question-posing utterances and would label language more frequently in stories that were scripted than in books that were not scripted. The utterances produced by most parents include questions like what is this? Do you know what is this? Which color is this?, directive statements like pay attention, look here?, nouns and verbs. The parent child interaction during SBR reveals that while using the scripted books parents used more questions than unscripted books (Andrea Barton et al., 2020). Among the 10 parents only one parent didn’t ask any questions about either book during the shared book reading.

Additionally, we predicted that they would read the content less directly and make fewer print references. In comparison to the unscripted book task, mothers of children with ASD did on average ask more questions and use more book language while engaging with worded book. In most of the instances the Parents were involved in labeling the vocabulary more often in books (Andrea et al., 2023). When compared to the usage of scripted picture books, the use of unscripted picture books may foster greater engagement in conversation between mother and child during storytelling chores.

Usage of prompts during shared book reading were greater for unscripted when compared with scripted books. Every caregiver engages with their child using different strategies that appeal to their child, and is responsive to the child’s preferences, abilities, and overall behavior during reading. In this particular context, the child responds to caregiver’s prompts and recognises them as cues for sustaining shared attention. The cues utilized not only contextualize the story book but also the wider shared reading activity, pointing to how it is meant to be perceived and negotiated in the local context of interaction. The use of unscripted picture books may encourage greater engagement in dialogue between mother and child during storytelling tasks when compared to the use of scripted picture books. The current results are encouraging because it demonstrates that the book type impacts the mother’s language production and suggests that wordless picture books can be utilized as a tool to encourage mothers to speak more when engaging in story-telling/reading activities with their child. Some mothers did not read what was beyond the text in the worded condition which may have reduced the level of social interaction.

In comparison, mothers seemed to engage in more conversation with their child in the wordless condition. This suggests that the use of wordless picture books may be particularly useful in encouraging the social interaction aspect of shared book reading. Telling a story without text may be perceived as more effortful than reading with text, however, this reflects a deeper level of thinking that is encouraged through this modality (Reid et al., 2018). Hence focusing on story-telling rather than simply text-reading may impact children’s development of sequencing skills, directionality, long-term memory, vocabulary and self expression in these conditions (Miyata & Freeman, 2020). Significantly greater number of word tokens (total number of words), word types (total number of unique words), and utterances when a wordless picture book, compared to a worded book, was used in shared reading with their teacher (Chaparro-Moreno et al., 2017). Westerveld et al. (2020) found that parents were able to engage their child in SBR and demonstrated a range of print-and meaning-related SBR behaviors with no evidence of a focus on print. Multiple regressions showed direct effects of parents’ explicit teaching of story structure and use of questions on their children’s verbal participation in children with ASD.

In conclusion, the study analyzed visual attention, verbal engagement and parental SBR behaviors during shared book reading using scripted and unscripted story books in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. There was no significant difference between visual attention and verbal engagement of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders during shared book reading using both the books. The statistically significant differences were noticed in the total parent utterances and use of book language in the parental SBR behaviors as the unscripted story books lack prescribed scripts for the story. This study demonstrates that, when compared to the use of worded picture books, the use of wordless picture books may encourage greater engagement in conversation between mother and child during storytelling tasks. A greater number of parent and child utterances were noted during shared book reading using unscripted story books because their utterances were not restricted to the book language. The main conclusions demonstrate that the type of book scripted or unscripted has a major influence and contributes to the intervention of toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Linguistic and pre literacy skills in children can be developed as a result of parental SBR behaviors.