From shared reading to self-narration: a developmental pathway for reading-based psychological support

Reading-based psychological support is usually studied as clinical bibliotherapy, shared reading, or literacy-related intervention, and these strands are rarely followed across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood. This perspective asks whether shared reading can become a source of self-narration. In childhood, reading with a responsive adult may support emotional language and meaning-making. During adolescence, some narrative resources may be selectively taken up and revised. In emerging adulthood, they may be used to organize transitions, commitments, and possible futures into an evolving life story. The account presents this as a developmental hypothesis rather than as evidence that childhood reading causes later narrative identity. Reading is treated as a complement to mental-health treatment, not as a substitute. The result is a set of empirical questions about mediation, developmental timing, relational quality, and contextual confounding.