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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Developmental Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1569925
Effectiveness of Social-Themed Picture Book Reading in Enhancing Children's Prosocial Behavior
Provisionally accepted- 1 State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Science and Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
- 2 Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Picture book reading is widely recognized as beneficial for the early development of preschool children. The current study investigates the impact of parent-child shared reading of picture books, particularly those with social themes, on the prosocial behavior of five-year-old children. The children were assigned with prosocial behavior tasks and an empathy questionnaire was employed to examine a potential mediator. Results indicate that children who participated in shared reading of socially themed picture books scored significantly higher on prosocial behavior measures compared to those in other book theme groups. Furthermore, mediation analysis demonstrates that empathy fully mediates the relationship between parent-child shared reading of picture books and prosocial behavior. These findings highlight the critical role of parent-child shared reading in early social development and provide valuable insights to enhance family education practices.
Keywords: Shared reading, Prosocial Behavior, Empathy, Preschool children, picture books
Received: 21 Feb 2025; Accepted: 26 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 CHEN, Lyu and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liqi Zhu, State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Science and Mental Health, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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