Reading to young children is a well-documented way to contribute to their cognitive growth and language skills during the preschool years. But new research, reported in Education Week (July 26, 2006; www.edweek.org), shows that reading to infants and toddlers also yields promising results.

Researchers from five universities and from Mathematica Policy Research Inc., found that when English-speaking mothers in low-income households read to their very young children, the youngsters had a greater language comprehension, larger vocabularies, and higher cognitive scores before the age of 2, compared to toddlers who were not read to very often. Among Hispanic mothers who read to their children in Spanish every day, the children had greater language and cognitive development by the age of 3 than those who were not read to frequently.