The goal of this study is to investigate whether a shared reading intervention including emotion and mind-related dialogues (SAGA for Toddlers) supports the development of 11 to 36 moth-old-children in early childhood education and care.
The main questions it aims to answer are:
1. Does the SAGA model support children's social-emotional development? 2. Does the SAGA model support children's language development?
The participating children will attend the intervention at the early childhood education and care.
The participating personnel at the early childhood education and care will receive training, implement the intervention, and answer questionnaires.
The participating caregivers will attend caregiver-evenings and answers questionnaires.
11 to 36 -months old at the start of the study
Living in Finland
Attending Swedish speaking early childhood education and care
None
Single group
SAGA for Toddlers
BehavioralSAGA for Toddlers includes training sessions and workshops for the ECEC personnel on the mentalization-based shared reading intervention following the SAGA model. During the intervention shared reading sessions (5-10-minutes each) are held for groups of 2 to 3 children for 10 weeks (at least 3 sessions per week) at the ECEC by the personnel. Caregivers are involved in the intervention via caregiver meetings held at the ECEC by the investigators.
Social Emotional development
Social Emotional development is assessed by the personnel and caregivers with the 42-item Brief Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA). The assessment includes two subscales Problem scores (31 items, range 0-62, higher scores indicate more problems) and Competence scores (11 items, range 0-22, higher scores indicate better social-emotional competence).
Language development
Language development is reported by the caregivers using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MCDI), with separate questionnaires for 8- to 16-month-old, 16- to 30 month-old, and 2,5 to 4 year-old children, correct questionnaire is chosen based on the child's age. The questionnaires measure the size of the child's expressive vocabulary, and the child's use of gestures, sentences and grammar.
Pro-social behavior
Pro-social behavior is assessed by the personnel and the caregivers with the 10-item child prosocial behavior questionnaire (CPBQ). The questionnaire including three subscales Comforting (range 1-15), Sharing (range 1-20), and Helping (range 0-15), higher scores indicate positive outcome.
Caregiver's emotional availability
Caregiver's emotional availability is measured with the 36-item Emotional Availability Self-Report (EA-SR). Following Salo and colleagues (2025) three subscales are calculated: Caregiver scale (12-items, range 8 to 60), Child scale (9-items, range 9 to 45), and Dyadic scale (15-items, range 15 to 75). Higher scores indicate better outcome.
Personnel mind-mindedness
Personnel mind-mindedness is an index of mentalization ability. It is assessed with the mind-mindedness task. In this task, the pedagogue randomly selects four children from the children participating in the study, and freely describes them. The descriptions are audio-recorded and later transcribed. Each description will be analyzed using the coding system, which categorizes all the comments in the following categories: physical; behavioral; mental; self-referential; relational; general. A score will be obtained by calculating the number of attributes in each category. A total score (MM\_TOT) will also be computed. It is assumed that more mental descriptions will indicate better mind-mindedness.
Caregiver's mentalizing ability
Caregiver mentalizing is self-assessed with the 24-item Parental Mentalizing Questionnaire. The measure has four subscales: 1) Parental self-mentalizing ("SELF", 7 items, range: 7-49), 2) Parental child-mentalizing ("CHILD", 7 items, range: 7-49), 3) Lack of Effort ("LE", 5 items, range: 5-35), and 4) Curiosity ("C", 5 items, range: 5-35). Higher scores on the SELF, CHILD, and C subscales, and a lower score on the LE subscale indicate better outcome.
Personnels' mentalizing ability
Personnels' mentalizing ability is self-assessed with the 28-item Mentalization Scale (MentS). MentS has three subscales: MentS-Self (MentS-S, 8 items, range 1-40) and MentS-Others (MentS-O, 10 items, range 10-50) assessing the ability to mentalize one self's or other people's minds, and MentS-Motivation (MentS-M, 10 items, range 10-50) assessing the respondent's motivation to mentalize about other people. Higher score means better outcome.
Content of the reading sessions
Content of the reading sessions are enquired after each session with a session log (which book was used, did the child interact with the material). Session logs are filled by the intervention group personnel regarding the intervention sessions and by the control group personnel regarding 'business-as-usual' shared reading sessions at the group.
Number of sessions participated
The session log is used to record the number of shared reading sessions participated by each child during the intervention
Fidelity to the intervention
Fidelity to the SAGA for toddlers intervention model will be assessed via video recordings. The videos are analyzed qualitatively to assess how well the personnel follow the SAGA model in their interaction.
Use of the SAGA model after the active intervention at ECEC
Personnel's use of the SAGA model after the 10-weeks intervention period is enquired with a questionnaire detailing the average frequency and duration of the sessions.
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University of Helsinki
Lead sponsor
Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland
Collaborator
