Income Related Language Gap Arises During Infancy

Language indicators from studies during the last have century have found that, among 5-year-olds, children of lower socioeconomic status (SES) score two years behind their more privileged counterparts on standardized language development tests. More recent studies indicate that this language gap emerges during infancy.

Anne Fernald, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has shown that by the age of 18 months, there were significant differences between the vocabulary and real-time language processing efficiency of higher- compared with lower-SES infants. She found that a 24-month-old low-SES infant performed at the same level as an 18-month-old high-SES infant, according to a press release about Fernald's work.

Fernald and her team run a parent education study that targets low-income Spanish speaking mothers in East San Jose, California. Using the results from Fernald's study, the team teaches Latina mothers how they can best engage their infants' early brain development to enhance language skills.

The program, currently only including data from 32 families, shows preliminary results that are very promising. Mothers in the program are engaged in more frequent and higher quality communications with their 18-month-olds than the control group mothers.

"What's most exciting," said Fernald, "is that by 24 months the children of more engaged moms are developing bigger vocabularies and processing spoken language more efficiently. Our goal is to help parents understand that by starting in infancy, they can play a role in changing their children's life trajectories."