Journal Article

Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different Socioeconomic Backgrounds

Sperry, Douglas E., Sperry, Linda L., Miller, Peggy J.

2019

Overview

Amid growing controversy about the oft-cited \"30-million-word gap,\" this investigation uses language data from five American communities across the socioeconomic spectrum to test, for the first time, Hart and Risley's (1995) claim that poor children hear 30 million fewer words than their middle-class counterparts during the early years of life. The five studies combined ethnographic fieldwork with longitudinal home observations of 42 children (18-48 months) interacting with family members in everyday life contexts. Results do not support Hart and Risley's claim, reveal substantial variation in vocabulary environments within each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest that definitions of verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which low-income children are exposed.

• Publisher: Wiley for the Society for Research in Child Development,Wiley-Blackwell,Blackwell Publishing Ltd
• Subject: Bystanders / Caregivers / Child Development / Child poverty / Child Rearing - ethnology / Child, Preschool / Children / Comparative Analysis / Definitions / EMPIRICAL ARTICLES / Ethnography / Everyday life / Family Environment / Family Relationship / Female / Humans / Infant / Infants / Language Acquisition / Longitudinal Studies / Low Income / Low income groups / Male / Middle Class / North Americans / Poverty / Relatives / Social Class / Social Environment / Socioeconomic Status / Toddlers / Verbal Communication / Vocabulary / Vocabulary Development / Young Children