Mothers’ Mediation in Book-Reading Activities Through the Lens of the MISC Model: Relation to SES and Children’s Early Literacy

This chapter focuses on mothers’ mediation in a book-reading activity through the lens of the MISC model. It aims to expand the understanding of the nature of this activity in families from different socioeconomic statuses (SES). We present an example of a study whose questions were: (1) Is the mother’s reading mediation related to children’s emergent literacy (EL)? (2) Are these relations different in low- compared to middle-SES families? Ninety-four kindergarteners (equally divided into middle- and low-SES families) and their mothers participated. The mother-child book-reading interaction was coded according to the MISC model for extracting the mothers’ mediation. Children’s EL skills were assessed before the interaction. The EL level of low-SES children was lower than that of middle-SES children, and the mothers’ cognitive and emotional mediation levels in low-SES families was lower than in middle-SES families. A correlation was found between mothers’ cognitive mediation and children’s EL only in the middle-SES group. These relations were not found regarding the mothers’ emotional mediation. The results are discussed under the scope of the MISC model, including family SES, children’s early literacy, and mothers’ knowledge.