SES differences in language processing skill and vocabulary are evident at 18 months

By Anne Fernald, Virginia A. Marchman, A. Weisleder. Developmental Science, 2012

1,275 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This research revealed both similarities and striking differences in early language proficiency among infants from a broad range of advantaged and disadvantaged families. English-learning infants (n = 48) were followed longitudinally from 18 to 24 months, using real-time measures of spoken language processing. The first goal was to track developmental changes in processing efficiency in relation to vocabulary learning in this diverse sample. The second goal was to examine differences in these crucial aspects of early language development in relation to family socioeconomic status (SES). The most important findings were that significant disparities in vocabulary and language processing efficiency were already evident at 18 months between infants from higher- and lower-SES families, and by 24 months there was a six-month gap between SES groups in processing skills critical to language development.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/bbfd99dd7f129764c2c799f633f3382481734e69

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Citations in the corpus

SAYCam: A Large, Longitudinal Audiovisual Dataset Recorded From the Infant’s Perspective (2020, background): “Further, children’s learning environments are an important source of individual variation between children (Fernald et al., 2012; Hart & Risley, 1992; Sperry et al., 2019); hence, characterizing these environments is an important step in developing interventions to enhance or alter children’s learni”
Childhood Adversity and Neural Development: Deprivation and Threat as Distinct Dimensions of Early Experience (2014, background): “, 2007), language ability (Fernald et al., 2013; Weisleder and Fernald, 2013), and overall cognitive and academic achievement (Brooks-Gunn and Duncan, 1997; Duncan et al.”
THE DETERMINANTS OF HUMAN CAPITAL FORMATION DURING THE EARLY YEARS OF LIFE: THEORY, MEASUREMENT, AND POLICIES (2015, methodology): “They have shown how such a measure changes with age and how it relates to socioeconomic status (see Fernald et al. 2008, 2013).”
Parental factors in children’s motivation for learning English: a case in China (2015, background): “Lower SES children lag behind higher SES counterparts in their vocabulary size and verbal processing efficiency as early as 18 months of age (Fernald, Marchman, and Weisleder 2013).”