The Effects of Low Socioeconomic Status and Interventions That Narrow the Gap
By Sarah Abood
Prompt: In this essay, you will apply the writing skills that you have been honing this semester – drafting and invention techniques, organization and revision strategies, rhetorical and argument analysis, dialoguing with sources, persuasive appeals – in order to present a compelling argument for a particular discourse community.
Does poverty affect children’s language development? Cognitive scientists have long been developing theories concerning language acquisition. Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar states that all humans are born with an innate understanding of acquiring language. Chomsky argues that “language is a natural object, a component of the human mind, physically represented in the brain and part of the biological endowment of species.”1 Not all expressions are taught or experienced previously, and yet speakers are still able to competently apprehend and apply the new language.2 The fact that children are able to acquire language in the same manner with little effort indicates that the nature of language is instinctive, so what factors concerning socioeconomic status affect language acquisition? As Rufan Luo’s article in the Journal of Family Medicine explains, socioeconomic status (SES) has a profound impact on the environment, brain chemistry, and resources available to children. Luo categorized SES impacts into three areas: quantity, quality and access to language.3 Therefore, while all humans have this innate understanding of language, children living in poverty are adversely impacted by the quantity of language input, the quality of language interactions, and the access to learning resources they receive given their circumstances.4 Because new research is demonstrating the very negative effects low socioeconomic status can have on child language acquisition and complexity, we should take heed of this imperative issue. As one of the most visible achievements in early human growth, language development has great significance in effective daily life and communication. It is imperative that society intervenes to narrow this extremely significant gap.
The first factor that drives socioeconomic differences is the quantity of language input to which children are exposed. University of Kansas researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley led a groundbreaking study in identifying “remarkable differences” in early vocabulary experiences of children.5 Hart and Risley recruited forty-two families to participate, including thirteen high-income families, ten families of middle socioeconomic status, thirteen of low socioeconomic status, and six families on welfare. They conducted monthly one-hour observations of each family from the time the child was seven months until the age of three. Observers found that 86 percent to 98 percent of the words used by each child by the conclusion of the observations were derived from the parents’ vocabularies. Not only was the vocabulary similar, but the average number of words used, the duration of conversations, and speech patterns were mimicked. The research concluded the average welfare child had half as much experience per hour (616 words per hour) as the average working class child (1,251 words per hour), and less than one third as much experience as the average professional class child (2,153 per hour). Projecting with these data, Hart and Risley calculated that by the time children were four years old, there would be a thirty-million word gap between children from poor backgrounds and those in wealthier, professional class households.6 This gap has obvious negative implications for the future success of children in communication, education, and careers. Complex vocabulary expands a child’s access to new information and his ability to learn about his world. This unbelievably large discrepancy amongst children of different socioeconomic backgrounds places children in poverty at a large disadvantage before their formal education even begins.
There is, however, more to language acquisition by exposure than simply the quantity of words to which the child is exposed; the quality of language input also matters significantly. Caregiver speech heavily influences children’s language development regarding engagement, responsiveness, and clausal and lexical density.7 What specifically defines “high-quality” language input in comparison to “low-quality” language input? Research on childdirected speech (CDS), or “parentese,” can be analyzed to provide an answer to this question. Parentese, or baby talk, is the type of speech in which an adult talks to a child in an exaggerated and repetitive way, “characterized by higher pitch and shorter utterances.”8 Children not only prefer listening to this speech style in comparison to adult-directed speech, or ADS, but also learn more successfully from it.9 In one study, one- to four-month-old infants “were able to detect phonemic differences between subtly distinct syllable sequences with contrastive middle syllables (e.g., ‘marana’ vs ‘malana’) only in CDS, which had a combination of higher mean pitch, larger amplitude, and longer syllable duration than ADS.”10 Large pitch contours have been found to enable better vowel discrimination in infants, evidently helpful for different aspects of language learning. CDS is significant in determining how socioeconomic status affects language development because parents from a lower SES background are typically more directive in their speech. This means less variance in grammar and lexicon of utterances.11 Maternal lexical diversity is a strong predictor of child vocabulary use, for the “use of syntactic structures that are dense and rich” that children are exposed to is what they are more likely to mirror.12 My research suggests that the manner in which the caregiver speaks to his or her child is extremely significant in effective language acquisition, an issue that can certainly be addressed through instruction and feedback.
In addition to CDS, the quality of care children receive contributes to the adversities children face in language acquisition and development.13 There has been extensive research on the stress present in low socioeconomic environments and the effect it has on brain activity and language development. Children growing up in poorer conditions have been found to have higher levels of salivary cortisol, resulting in functional and structural differences in areas of the brain regulating stress hormones. This includes the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex, which are all crucial systems for memory and efficient operations.14 This dysregulation of stress response extends into education settings, interfering with acquiring language. One study concluded that “children with poor phonemic awareness skills, despite higher SES backgrounds, had increased perisylvian function during a reading task” in contrast to children with low phonemic awareness and SES with decreased specialization of language function.15 Therefore, the area of the brain responsible for language is negatively affected by the stresses of a child’s environment, even when operating at the same phonemic competency.16
The final socioeconomic pathway to analyze affecting language development is the availability of learning resources for children. Children living in print-rich environments are more likely to read on a schedule, which has obvious implications for enhancing vocabulary and literary intelligence.17 Children in financially strained environments often have significantly fewer printed materials in their homes and schools in comparison with more affluent households. In low-income neighborhoods, the ratio of books to children is one book for every 300 children, compared to one book for every thirteen in more prosperous neighborhoods.18 Furthermore, 61 percent of low-income homes have no books at all, averaging 0-2 age-appropriate books in their homes.19 In addition to limited resources, there is also a correlation between SES and the time caregivers spend with children in an effort to improve language acquisition. According to the Handbook of Early Literary Research, “a child from a low-income family enters first grade with an average of only 25 hours of one-to-one picture book reading, compared with 1,000 to 1,700 hours for a child from a typical middle-class home.”20 Reading books to children is one of the primary ways to increase exposure to language and stimulate imagination, opening valuable discussions between caregiver and child. The insufficient materials and lesser time available in lower-class childhoods have significant effects on the child’s future. According to a twenty-year study led by Mariah Evans, “Whether rich or poor, illiterate or college graduates, parents who have books in the home increase the level of education their children will attain.”21 Evans found that having as few as twenty books in the home still significantly propels a child to higher levels of education, and having 500 or more books in the home propels the child 2.4 years further in education.22 Lack of adequate resources is evidently an issue that, if addressed, could guide millions of children to improved language acquisition.
One could argue that no interventions can be made to improve child language acquisition, and that low socioeconomic status automatically places children at a disadvantage that cannot be restored. Half the children from low-income communities start first grade up to two whole years behind their peers, and “there is almost a 90% probability that a child will remain a poor reader at the end of the fourth grade if the child is a poor reader at the end of first grade.”23 Although discouraging, statistics like this do not mean low SES guarantees communicative and educational failure. As Anne Fernald, a Stanford associate professor of psychology, claims, “It’s clear that SES is not destiny.” Fernald observes the good news that “regardless of economic circumstances, parents who use more and richer language with their infants can help their child to learn more quickly.”24
There is extensive evidence demonstrating the various efforts that can be made to reduce the gaps among classes and give all children the opportunity to develop effective communicative skills necessary for life. In Mariah Evans’ study previously mentioned, the research found that “having books in the home is twice as important as the father’s education level.”25 It can be observed, then, that while the education of parents is important, it does not predestine a child to an unsuccessful educational career, for other present factors can be addressed. Additionally, an obvious and free-of-charge intervention that can be made is simply interacting with your child more with effective CDS. Increasing the quantity of language input to expand vocabulary in a manner that children prefer can have immediate benefits. The Thirty Million Word Initiative, for example, was an eight-week intervention delivered during an hour to twenty-six families of the South Side, Chicago. Parents were instructed to increase communication, book-sharing, and writing activities with their children. The treatment group had a significant, sustained increase in understanding child language development post-intervention: a 31.6 percent increase in Adult Word Count and a 24.9 percent increase in Conversational Turn Count were recorded.26 In one study, preschool children in a low income area brought home a single age-appropriate, good quality book weekly for three months. The results indicated an increase in book-sharing activities at home, and the intervention group was more likely to read books daily.27 In addition to increasing the quantity of language input, we can also influence quality of time and language. Whitehurt and colleagues formalized a set of dialogic book-sharing techniques, including asking open-ended questions extending beyond the content of the book, encouraging participation, and extensive pointing and labeling.28 A particularly interesting finding was that the researchers “did not find child age to be related to improvements in either expressive or receptive language: the extent to which language skills benefitted was no different for those younger or older than 3 years.”29 This suggests that book-sharing interventions improve language acquisition no matter the age. The Play and Learning Strategies interventions trained low-income mothers to improve the quality of CDS. Mothers were trained to provide “sensitive, warm, and contingent responses to their 6-month old infants,” and results indicated that the experimental groups outperformed the control group in receptive and productive vocabularies.30 These initiatives are clear examples of successful interventions that can be made to address the areas in which children of low socioeconomic status have a disadvantage. Narrowing the gap does not require a grand donation or education initiative, but rather increasing parent-child interaction, teaching caregivers the most effective way to speak to their children, and redistributing the excess of learning materials available in schools or public libraries.
My goal is not to show that children living in a poorer environment are less loved in comparison to their wealthier counterparts; rather, it is to demonstrate the clear proof that their living circumstances adversely affect their language development. There is profound evidence demonstrating that low SES impacts language acquisition–specifically in the areas of access to learning resources, the quantity of language input, and the quality of language input. Language acquisition is a key process in human development, as it sets a foundation for effective communication and unlimited access to new information throughout life. As multiple interventions have demonstrated, Luo’s categories of language development can be addressed with education of caregivers and extending access to printed materials. Although the language development gap exists, it is certainly not the fate of children in poverty to suffer from the adversities presented to them. Much can be done; the first step is starting a conversation.
ENDNOTES
1. Noam Chomsky, On Nature and Language, ed. Adriana Belletti and Luigi Rizzi (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2002), 57.
2. Ibid., 57.
3. Rufan Luo, “The Family’s Role in the Relation between Socioeconomic Status and Early Language Development,” Journal of Family Medicine 3, no. 6 (2016): 2.
4. Ibid., 3.
5. Anne Fernald, “Twenty Years after, ‘Meaningful Differences,’ It’s Time to Reframe the ‘Deficit’ Debate about the Importance of Children’s Early Language Experience,” Human Development 58 (2017): 1-2.
6. Ibid., 2.
7. Erika Hoff, Language Development 5th Edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005), 69-70.
8. Ibid., 70.
9. Jessica F. Schwab and Casey Lew- Williams, “Language Learning, Socioeconomic Status, and Child-directed Speech,” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Cognitive Science 7 (2016): 2-7.
10. Ibid., 7.
11. Hoff, Language Development, 69-71.
12. Ibid, 71.
13. Amy Pace, Rufan Luo, Kathy Hirsh- Pasek, and Roberta MichnickGolinkoff, “Identifying Pathways Between Socioeconomic Status and Language Development,” Annual Review of Linguistics 3 (2017): 285-6.
14. Eric D. Finegood, Suzanne C. Perkins, and James E. Swain, “Poverty and Language Development: Roles of Parenting and Stress.” Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience 10, no.4 (2013): 11-2.
15. Ibid., 11.
16. Ibid., 12.
17. E. Duursma, M. Augustyn, and B. Zuckerman, “Reading Aloud to Children: The Evidence,” Archives of Disease in Childhood 93 (2008): 554-7.
18.Susan B. Neuman and David K. Dickinson, “Early Language Experience Is Vital to Developing Fluency in Understanding,” in Handbook of Early Literary Research, ed. Neuman and Dickinson (New York: Guilford Press, 2001), 16.
19. Jeff McQuillan, The Literary Crisis: False Claims and Real Solutions, (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 1998) 6.
20. Neuman and Dickinson, Handbook of Early Literary Research, 16.
21. Mariah Evans, “Family Scholarly Culture and Educational Success: Books and Schooling in 27 Nations,” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 28 (2010): 171-2.
22. Ibid., 172.
23. Jack Brizius, Generation to Generation: Realizing the Promise of Family Literacy (Ypsilanti, MI: High Scope Press, 1993), 32.
24. Fernald, “Twenty Years after, ‘Meaningful Differences,’” 1.
25. Mariah Evans, “Family Scholarly Culture and Educational Success: Books and Schooling in 27 Nations”, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 28 (Elsevier Ltd, 2010): 171.
26. Rufan Luo, “The Family’s Role in the Relation between Socioeconomic Status and Early Language Development,” Journal of Family Medicine 3, no. 6 (2016): 2-3.
27. Ibid., 3.
28. N. Dowdall, G. J. Melendez-Torres, L. Murray, F. Gardner, L. Hartford, and P. J Cooper, “Shared Picture Book Reading Interventions for Child Language Development: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis,” Child Development 91, no. 2 (2019): 4-23.
29. Ibid., 23.
30. Luo, “Family’s Role,” 3.
