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Neither activity wins as a universal substitute for the other. The best-supported approach is shared reading that combines an engaging story with brief, responsive conversation about characters’ feelings, thoughts, goals and social problems. A 2025 meta-analysis found the clearest overall benefit for prosocial skills, but not a consistent advantage for any single reading format or adult role. Discussion is a practical way to make story time socially meaningful; it is not a guaranteed treatment and should be adapted to the child and the outcome you want to support.
What “social-emotional learning” means in a story
Reading research uses several different outcomes that are often grouped under empathy or social-emotional learning. They are related, but they are not interchangeable:
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- Prosocial behavior: helping, sharing, comforting or cooperating.
- Perspective-taking: considering what another person may know, believe or want.
- Emotional understanding: identifying feelings, their causes and how they may change.
- Theory of mind: reasoning about another person’s thoughts, beliefs or intentions, including when those differ from reality.
- Broader social-emotional competence: these abilities plus skills such as social understanding and emotion regulation.
A child can improve on one measure without showing the same change on all the others. Therefore, a study reporting better prosocial behavior does not establish that a reading routine improves emotion regulation or every aspect of empathy.
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What the strongest recent evidence found
The 2025 meta-analysis
Ciesielska, Kucirkova and Thomson reviewed 21 eligible studies involving 2,293 children ages 2 to 10 in 10 countries. The underlying studies were published from 1977 through 2022. Their 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis found an overall effect across empathy-related measures, but statistical significance remained only for prosocial skills.
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That result supports a careful conclusion: storybook reading can be associated with children’s willingness or ability to act helpfully, while evidence for perspective-taking, emotional understanding and other empathy measures was less consistent in the combined analysis.
Did reading with an adult beat independent reading?
No significant difference appeared between independent reading and reading with an adult in either an active or passive role. This does not mean adult interaction is unnecessary. It means the studies classified in those broad categories did not produce a reliable overall difference once their varied ages, settings, stories and outcome measures were combined.
Context mattered in a more specific way. Individualized or one-to-one settings uniquely predicted overall empathy scores in the analysis, whereas group context did not. That is a pattern across the included studies, not proof that every child learns social-emotional skills best alone or that group story time is ineffective.
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The authors found no overall effect attributable to reading format and did not have enough information to test story content adequately. “Format” also does not answer every question about a structured emotion-discussion program. An intervention in which an adult deliberately asks about a character’s fear, belief or motive is more specific than the broad categories used in a cross-study analysis. The review therefore cannot justify saying that discussion has no effect.
What interactive and dialogic reading add
Conversation creates opportunities for mental-state language
The American Academy of Pediatrics’ 2024 technical report describes shared story and picture-book reading as a setting in which adults can talk about characters’ emotions and mental states. It reports that adults’ use of emotion and mental-state language during book sharing is related to social competence and perspective-taking in 2.5-year-olds. Those findings are associations: they show that the language adults use and children’s social abilities occur together, not that one particular question guarantees a lasting developmental change. The report is available in Pediatrics.
What the dialogic-reading review says
Pillinger and Vardy’s 2022 systematic review identified 46 dialogic-reading studies. For children under five, it found positive evidence across a wide range of language and literacy skills. It also found some evidence involving enjoyment, motivation, parent-child attachment, parental confidence and stress, and social-emotional development. The authors called for more methodologically robust studies to determine when effects occur and how important they are in everyday practice. Read the review at https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12407.
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Dialogic reading is not simply stopping after every sentence to test a child. It is a flexible exchange in which the adult follows the child’s attention, invites a response, expands what the child says and connects words or events in the story. Emotion talk can be one part of that exchange.
Findings from early-childhood settings
Schapira and Grazzani’s 2025 narrative review examined 15 empirical studies—five in nursery settings and 10 in preschools—with children generally between 1.5 and 6 years old under the review criteria. The review describes emotion-focused discussion during shared reading as promising, including studies in which children heard a story and then discussed the featured emotions. Because the studies differ in design, age, setting and intervention, the review does not establish one universal program. Its findings are summarized in Frontiers in Psychology.
Why talking about a story may support social learning
A story supplies a safe, symbolic situation. A child can examine a character’s dilemma without being the person who is angry, excluded or afraid. Conversation then makes several kinds of thinking visible:
- Emotion labeling: naming sadness, excitement, jealousy, worry or relief gives the child vocabulary for internal states.
- Cause-and-effect reasoning: asking what happened before a feeling helps children connect events, interpretations and reactions.
- Perspective comparison: two characters can see the same event differently, and the child can consider both views.
- Prediction and revision: children can predict what a character will do, then revise that prediction as the plot supplies new information.
- Prosocial problem-solving: the child can suggest a way to help, apologize, include someone or repair a conflict.
These are mechanisms that make discussion plausible and useful. They should not be confused with proof that every conversation produces broad, durable gains. The adult’s responsiveness, the child’s language and attention, and the story’s clarity all affect what a child can do with a prompt.
Reading aloud and discussion: how to choose for your goal
| Primary goal | Useful emphasis | What the adult can do | Evidence qualification |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enjoying a shared story and building routine | Fluent, expressive reading | Follow the child’s interest; allow reactions without interrupting constantly | Enjoyment and engagement are compatible with dialogic reading, but no single routine is required. |
| Building emotion vocabulary | Short pauses at clear emotional moments | Name a possible feeling and invite the child to agree, disagree or offer another word | Emotion-language use during book sharing is associated with social competence and perspective-taking in the AAP report. |
| Considering another viewpoint | Questions about thoughts, knowledge and goals | Ask what a character knows, wants or thinks another person believes | Perspective-taking findings are less consistent than the meta-analysis’ prosocial result. |
| Practicing helping and cooperation | Social problem and resolution | Ask what a character could do next and compare possible consequences | Prosocial skills showed the clearest significant effect in the 2025 meta-analysis. |
| Supporting a group of children | Brief, inclusive turns | Offer several ways to respond—speaking, pointing, acting or drawing—and do not require every child to answer | Group context did not uniquely predict overall empathy in the meta-analysis; that is not evidence against group reading. |
A practical shared-reading routine
The following sequence keeps the story central while creating room for social-emotional learning. It can take a few minutes of conversation in a short picture book; it does not require turning reading into a lesson plan.
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- Read for meaning first. Use an expressive voice and let the child look at the pictures. Do not interrupt every page. A child who is absorbed in the plot is already practicing attention to people, events and consequences.
- Pause at a meaningful moment. Stop when a character experiences a recognizable feeling, misunderstands another person, faces exclusion or needs to make a decision. A natural pause is less intrusive than a question on every page.
- Start with observation. Ask, “What happened?” or “What do you notice?” before asking the child to infer an unseen feeling. Pointing, facial expression, posture and the surrounding action can all provide clues.
- Invite, rather than demand, an interpretation. Try “How might the character feel?” or “What might they be thinking?” Accept a reasonable answer that differs from yours and ask what in the picture or story supports it.
- Connect feeling to motive. “What does the character want?” and “Why might that matter to them?” move beyond labeling an emotion to understanding a person’s goal.
- Consider alternatives. For a social problem, ask what the character could do next. Compare two possible actions without implying that one answer is always obvious.
- Link to the child only when welcome. A brief connection—“Have you ever felt left out?”—can make an idea meaningful. If the child does not want to share, return to the character rather than pressing for a personal disclosure.
- Finish with the story. Read on, enjoy the ending and allow the child to change the subject. The routine should preserve reading as a pleasurable relationship, not a test.
Age, language and setting adjustments
Toddlers and younger preschoolers
Use concrete observations and one-word or two-word choices: “Is she happy or worried?” Point to a face, gesture or object. Imitating a character’s expression, naming an action or matching a picture to a feeling may be more developmentally appropriate than explaining a hidden belief.
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Older preschoolers
Add simple causes and alternatives: “He is hiding because he thinks the others will laugh. What could they do to help?” Invite more than one possible feeling when the evidence is ambiguous. Keep sentences short and give the child time to answer.
Early elementary children
Discuss conflicting motives, mistaken beliefs and changes across the plot. Ask how a character’s knowledge differs from another person’s and whether the ending solves the original social problem. Children can also compare two characters’ interpretations of the same event.
Children learning the language of the book
Use the child’s strongest language when possible, accept gestures or home-language responses and supply a few key emotion words in the book’s language. Pictures, facial expressions and acting can carry meaning when vocabulary is still developing. A correct label is less important than a comprehensible, responsive exchange.
One-to-one reading
Follow the individual child’s attention and adjust the number and difficulty of prompts. The 2025 meta-analysis found individualized context was a unique predictor of overall empathy scores, but this should guide responsiveness rather than become a rule that every reading session must be one-to-one.
Group reading
Use pauses that let children respond in different ways: a quick think-pair-share, pointing to an emotion card, acting out a choice or volunteering an answer. Avoid interpreting silence as lack of understanding. The meta-analysis did not find group context to be a unique predictor of overall empathy, but it also did not show that groups cannot support social learning.
Questions that open conversation without turning it into a quiz
- “What do you notice about the character’s face or body?”
- “What happened just before that feeling?”
- “What might the character want right now?”
- “Could the character be feeling two things at once?”
- “What does this character know that the other one does not?”
- “What could someone do to help?”
- “What might happen if they chose a different action?”
- “Did your idea about the character change after this page?”
There is no requirement to ask all of them. A child’s comment, question or silence should determine whether to continue, rephrase or move on.
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Common mistakes and better alternatives
Making every page a comprehension check
Frequent testing can crowd out enjoyment and the child’s own observations. Read several pages without interruption, then pause where the emotional or social action genuinely changes.
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Insisting on the adult’s interpretation
Characters can have mixed feelings, and illustrations can be ambiguous. Ask what clues support an answer and acknowledge another interpretation when it fits the story.
Equating an emotion word with empathy
Knowing that a character is sad is different from understanding why, considering what the character believes or choosing to help. Match the prompt to the outcome you want to practice.
Using a story to force personal disclosure
A child may understand a character’s experience without wanting to describe a similar event. Keep the discussion fictional when that feels safer.
Promising a guaranteed developmental result
Story discussion is an accessible context for social learning, not a clinical treatment, a substitute for supportive relationships or a guarantee that every child will show broad gains. Children with persistent emotional, behavioral or communication concerns may need advice from qualified health or education professionals in addition to shared reading.
How to interpret claims about “the best” method
When a program or article claims that discussion, read-alouds or independent reading is superior, check four details:
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- Outcome: Was the result prosocial behavior, perspective-taking, emotion knowledge, language, literacy or something else?
- Participants: What were the children’s ages, language backgrounds and developmental needs?
- Context: Was the activity one-to-one, in a classroom group or completed independently?
- Interaction: Did the adult merely read, or were there planned prompts, feedback and follow-up activities?
These distinctions matter because the evidence base combines different stories, adult behaviors, settings and measurement tools. A result in preschool language development cannot automatically be presented as proof of an empathy effect, and a correlation between adult language and social competence cannot be marketed as a guaranteed causal program.
What literacy evidence does—and does not—tell us
The U.S. Department of Education’s What Works Clearinghouse rates shared book reading in a literacy evidence snapshot, not a social-emotional review. For preschool children it reports mixed effects on comprehension and language development and no discernible effects on alphabetics and general reading achievement. Those ratings should be kept in the literacy domain; they neither establish nor refute an effect on empathy or social-emotional learning. The snapshot is available at https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/EvidenceSnapshot/458.
Bottom line for parents and educators
Read aloud for the relationship, language and pleasure of the story; add brief, child-responsive discussion when a character’s feelings, thoughts or social choices provide a natural opening. Current evidence gives the strongest signal for prosocial skills, while findings for other empathy-related outcomes remain uneven. No study supports a universal rule that passive listening, adult-led discussion, independent reading or group reading is always best. The most defensible practice is flexible shared reading that respects the child’s age, language, attention and interpretation.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to stop and ask questions on every page?
No. Choose a few meaningful pauses and let the child’s attention guide the exchange. Continuous questioning can make reading feel like a test.
Can a child benefit from simply listening to a story?
Listening is part of shared reading and may support engagement and language. The evidence does not show that discussion must be added for every child or every book, nor that listening alone produces every social-emotional outcome.
Are group story times unsuitable for empathy development?
No. A meta-analysis found that group context did not uniquely predict overall empathy scores, but that finding is not a prohibition or a verdict against classroom reading.
What if my child gives an unexpected answer about a character’s feelings?
Ask what details led to the answer. If the interpretation fits the story, accept it; stories can support more than one reasonable perspective.
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Not necessarily. Any engaging story with relationships, goals or problems can open social-emotional conversation. A book provides an opportunity, not a guaranteed developmental effect.
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