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and the expectation that he would be more intrinsically motivated by the content of the book. Both mothers used some abstract or “beyond the text” references with each of their children. Each consistently used a greater number of abstract references in their interactions with the older of their siblings. This finding supports the research on SBR interactions in families with neurotypical siblings, which suggests that mothers provide a greater number of high level abstract references with the older of their children (van Kleeck & Beckley-McCall, 2002), which may be in part due to the perception of an older child having more advanced cognitive skills and higher intrinsic motivation than their younger counterpart. As highlighted in the research, excessive error correction can affect the quality of an SBR interaction and may have a negative impact on a child’s experience of learning to read (Baker et al., 2001). Positive feedback (in the form of specific and timely praise) may be especially important for children who have difficulty with reading, and has been included as an essential component in reading interventions such as PPP (McNaughton et al., 1987). In the current study, it was noted that verbal praise was absent from two SBR interactions (Cheryl–Andrew and Anne–James). When praise was used in the other interactions, it was predominantly non-specific (e.g., “Good job”). This suggests that mothers of children with ASD, or at least those observed in this study, may not be aware of the important role of praise in reading instruction, and may benefit from some strategies on the best way to deliver praise in the context of SBR. Educators and clinicians can guide parents in the use of specific feedback during SBR, which could further encourage literacy skill development in children with ASD. An interesting finding is that the mother with both a male and female child (Cheryl) used a greater number of utterances when interacting with her female child, which is consistent with previous research (Tracey & Young, 2002). Although we can again only speculate as to the reason why this may be the case, the outcome is that Cheryl may be inadvertently giving Nicola an advantage over her sibling Andrew with regards to opportunities to discuss book content and resulting benefits for vocabulary, comprehension, oral language, syntactic and social development. Although social skills were not reported on in this study, it seems likely that, based on their language profiles, all children in the current study may have benefited from more time or more interaction with parents during SBR. Limitations and future research In the current study, the primary focus of analysis was on the verbal elements of the SBR interactions, as it has been shown that feedback during reading instruction is predominantly verbal. In conjunction with effective instruction, verbal feedback can lead to enhanced learning (Hattie & Timperley, 2007), and has been tentatively proposed as a SBR strategy to enhance language and social communication skills in children with ASD (Tipton et al., 2017). Although gesture is also considered important for providing feedback during reading instruction (Cole, 2006), non-verbal elements (e.g., gestures) were not analysed in the present study. Non-verbal feedback (e.g., pats on the back and pointing) would be a worthwhile avenue for exploring in future research. Replications or extensions of the current study could be improved by aiming for a higher

level of interrater reliability on measures of transcription and coding. The reading sample included in this study was limited to 10 minutes of total reading, which may have influenced the findings. The impact of video recording may have also had an impact on parent and/or child behaviour. Further studies of this nature could be enhanced by including qualitative methods such as exploring parent perceptions and decision-making in relation to how they apply strategies using video feedback following a SBR interaction, for example. In addition, the sample size of this exploratory study is small and therefore it is difficult to generalise to other children with ASD. Future research could focus on larger sample sizes, families of different socioeconomic backgrounds and more in-depth analysis including both adult and child utterances during SBR. Conclusion This exploratory study suggests that in families with more than one child with ASD of primary school age, parents may take a different approach to reading instruction with each of their children. This may impact the amount and type of linguistic input children are receiving during SBR, and may be the result of a number of factors, including each child’s sex, comorbidities, their age and/or reading ability. We hope that our preliminary study raises awareness of the potential difference in parent SBR behaviour with siblings with ASD. Parents of children with ASD may benefit from explicit guidance from educators and SLPs around how to support their child’s individual literacy needs using SBR, specifically in the area of comprehension (e.g., providing comprehension-monitoring feedback; eliciting language). We also hope this study might encourage in-depth research exploring the nature of SBR in families with children with ASD, especially in those families with multiple children with ASD. References Arciuli, J., Villar, G., Colmar, S., Evans, D., Einfeld, S., & Parmenter, T. (2013). Home-based reading between mothers and their children with autism spectrum disorders. Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties , 18 , 17–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/19404158.2012.747186 Bailey, B., & Arciuli, J. (2020). Reading instruction for children with autism spectrum disorders: A systematic review and quality analysis. Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders , 7 , 127–150. https://doi. org/10.1007/s40489-019-00185-8 Baker, L., Mackler, K., Sonnenschein, S., & Serpell, R. (2001). Parents’ interactions with their first-grade children during storybook reading and relations with subsequent home reading activity and reading achievement. Journal of School Psychology , 39 (5), 415–438. https://doi. org/10.1016/S0022-4405(01)00082-6 Bishop, D. V., & Snowling, M. J. (2004). Developmental dyslexia and specific language impairment: Same or different? Psychological Bulletin , 130 (6), 858–886. https:// doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.130.6.858 Blank, M., Rose, S. A., & Berlin, L. J. (1978). The language of learning: The preschool years . New York: Grune & Stratton. Brown, H. M., Oram-Cardy, J., & Johnson, A. (2013). A meta-analysis of the reading comprehension skills of individuals on the autism spectrum. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 43 , 932–955. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10803-012-1638-1

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