ABSTRACT

Infant behaviours were observed for 261, 4-month-old infants when they attended the Bookstartprogramme. Infant behaviours in this context were analysed in relation to child characteristics, such asgender, temperament, and birth order, and also in relation to the infant’s home book-readingenvironment (i.e., frequency of parental book reading and parental attitudes toward books). Genderdifferences were found in infants’ looking behaviours in the Bookstart programme context. When infantgender, 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 readby 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’scontext are discussed in relation to infant attention development and how early picture book relatedbehaviour might affect the overall development of emergent literacy.

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