Parents often hear that reading to their children is critical for supporting development, and the message is getting through to them. In fact, in the United States, a little over half of children between the ages of three and five were read to every day in 2007, and 83% of children in that age group in the same country were read to three or more times per week in 2012.

This is good news, because reading to young children helps their language and brain development. In fact, recent research has found that both the quality and quantity of shared book reading in infancy predicted later childhood vocabulary and reading skills. In other words, the more time parents spend reading, the greater the developmental benefits in their four-year-old children.

This is an important finding. But does it matter what books parents read? A new study has investigated this question. It followed infants across the second six months of life and found that when parents showed babies books that had faces or objects with specific labels, they learned more. This is in contrast to books that did not name images, or books that had the same label under each image. Books that named different characters also promoted greater learning. So what does this mean for parents? Not all books are created equal, so parents need to choose the books they share with their children with great care.

Question22：What does the passage say parents increasingly understand?
Question23：What can predict children’s reading skills according to recent research?
Question24：What kind of books are said to help babies learn more?
Question25：What are parents advised to do at the end of the passage?