WK6 Reading Learning to Talk

• Socioeconomic status (SES)


  One's access to financial, educational, and social resources, and the social positioning, privileges, and prestige that are derived from these resources
• Components of SES


  • Parental education
  • Family income
  • Parental occupation
• Maternal education appears to be the component of SES most strongly related to child development outcomes
• Income-based measures of SES allow researchers to classify families as above or below the federal poverty threshold
• Income-to-need ratios reflect the amount of poverty or affluence experienced in comparison to the federal poverty threshold
• The association between SES and language development is sufficiently robust that it appears across different measurement approaches
• The relation of SES to early language also appears within and across different ethnic groups
• One in five of all children in the United States - close to 15 million in total - live below the federal poverty level
• The percentage of children living in poverty has grown in recent decades, from 16.2% in 2000 to 22% in 2013
• Children under age 5 are more vulnerable to poverty than are older children, with one in four infants, toddlers, and preschoolers currently living in poor families
• The percentage of low-SES infants and toddlers is twice as high for Black, Hispanic, and American Indian children (more than 60%) than for White and Asian children (31%)
• Children whose parents have less than high school education are four times more likely (55% versus 13%) to live in poor families than their peers with at least one parent who has some college or higher education
• Seventy-two percent of children with unemployed parents live in poor families, while only 9% of children with at least one parent who has a full-time job year-round live in poverty
• Children living in poverty are exposed to a variety of toxic stressors, such as food insecurity, abuse, and neglect, as well as limited educational resources and opportunities
• More than half of low-income mothers with infants have some form of depression, and 11% have severe depression
• Mothers with higher levels of stress and depression talk less to their children
• Seventy-two percent of children with unemployed parents live in poor families. In contrast, only 9% of children with at least one parent who has a full-time job year-round live in poverty
• Toxic stressors children living in poverty are exposed to


  • Food insecurity
  • Abuse
  • Neglect
  • Limited educational resources and opportunities
• Children living in poverty


  Have higher risk of physical health problems (e.g. lead poisoning, low birth weight) and higher mortality rate during infancy and childhood than their more affluent peers
• Children living in poverty


  Are exposed to more violence, household chaos, separations from family members, and instability at home
• More than half of low-income mothers with infants


  Have some form of depression, and 11% have severe depression
• Mothers with higher levels of stress and depression


  Talk less with their children and have children with slower vocabulary growth
• Children from low-income families


  Have higher suspension and grade-repetition rates, and are seven times more likely to drop out of high school than their peers from high-income families
• Many studies have demonstrated the lifelong negative impacts of poverty on developmental outcomes, including brain structure; physical and mental health; and language, cognitive, behavioral, and emotional development
• Children from low-SES backgrounds, in general, lag behind their more affluent peers on measures of language comprehension and production from infancy through high school
• SES-related language gaps emerge early in life and are closely linked with later academic achievement and school success
• Although an infant may not produce a single word until on or around her first birthday, the foundation for communication begins to develop even before birth
• As infants become mobile


  They explore their worlds through sensorimotor experiences of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch
• Between the ages of 6, 9, and 12 months, infants from low-SES families


  Demonstrated reduced overall levels of oral and manual object exploration
• As early as 14 months, children from high-SES families


  Were exposed to and used more gestures during parent-child interaction, compared with their low-SES counterparts
• SES differences in gesture use

  Further predicted differences in vocabulary skills at 54 months
• There is limited evidence regarding SES-related differences in children's ability to follow gaze or establish and maintain joint attention within the first year, and existing findings are inconclusive
• As early as 18 months, infants in high-SES families


  Had larger expressive vocabularies compared with their peers in low-SES families
• By the age of 3 years, children from high-income households


  Already produced twice as many words as did their peers from low-income households
• Children living in poverty in the United States scored 15 months behind the national norm on a receptive vocabulary test by the age of 5 years
• Preschool children from low-income families in the UK were 15 months behind their more affluent peers in expressive vocabulary, and had slower vocabulary growth during preschool years
• Children from low-SES homes in Australia had an 8-month gap in their receptive vocabulary growth compared to children from high-SES families
• Having a smaller vocabulary


  Impedes children's ability to express their feelings and desires as well as to control their impulses
• SES disparities in vocabulary might reflect cultural differences in language socialization, rather than the language deficits of children from lower-SES homes
• SES


  Predicted the complexity and diversity of syntactic structures children produced during mother-child interaction, as well as children's performance on standardized tests of grammatical development