Children’s expressive language ability can be influenced by several factors including their socioeconomic background. Chronic stress exposure has seldom been considered as an intermediary factor between SES and language outcomes. The purpose of this study is to examine the semantic features of language of children living in poverty and to investigate the intersection of SES, stress, and language. Data will be collected from conversational and narrative language samples, and will be analyzed for total number of words, number of different words, number of rare words, and decontextualized language use. Stress will be measured with a parent questionnaire. A correlation analysis between stress and language will be performed. Results of this study will determine the effects of chronic stress on semantic language outcomes of children living in poverty.

Dr. Sara Steele has been extremely influential in the development of my project. Our weekly meetings have allowed me to improve my knowledge of research methods, linguistic processes, and the significance of our research study. I am very thankful for Dr. Steele’s guidance throughout the past year.