1-074 - SES and Infant Language Development: Four Longitudinal Studies

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Socioeconomic status is associated with variation in children's language development, but the nature of this association has not yet been adequately characterized. Here, four different studies look longitudinally at children ranging from 9 to 24 months of age, evaluating how SES and other environment variables relate to word recognition, phonetic perception, pragmatic interpretation, and other language outcome measures. The results reveal some surprising links and demonstrate the powerful effects of home environments on native-language learning even in the earliest stages.

The first talk reveals large effects of SES on receptive and expressive language, and shows that phonetic discrimination at 9 months is associated with richness of the home environment at 15 months but not with SES. The second uses a language-guided looking task and finds that overall performance, but not sensitivity to single-feature deviant pronunciations, is strongly associated with SES. The third examines infants from monolingual Spanish-speaking families and finds that links between SES and speed of word recognition are mediated by quantity of infant-directed speech in the home. Finally, the fourth finds that SES is correlated with how much 11-month-olds vocalize and how often parents respond, but that SES was not correlated with infants' pointing and gaze-following skills.

As a group, these large longitudinal studies reinforce the evidence for connections between SES and very early language, and go beyond this by making important steps toward explaining the nature of these links.

Sub Unit

• Language, Communication

Chair

• Daniel Swingley, University of Pennsylvania

Individual Presentations

• Socioeconomic Disparities and Contributions of the Home Environment to Infant and Toddler Language Development - Presenting Author: Kimberly G Noble, Teachers College, Columbia University; Natalie Hiromi Brito, Columbia University; Samantha Ann Melvin, Columbia University; Laura Engelhardt, University of Texas -Austin; William P Fifer, Columbia University/ NYSPI; Amy J Elliott, Sanford Health, Sioux Falls, SD

• Word Recognition, Phonological Specificity, and SES: a Longitudinal Word-Recognition Study of Toddlers - Presenting Author: Rachel R. Romeo, Harvard University; Daniel Swingley, University of Pennsylvania

• Child-directed speech mediates SES-differences in language-processing skill and vocabulary in Spanish-learning children - Presenting Author: Adriana Weisleder, New York University; Nancy Otero, Stanford University; Virginia A. Marchman, Stanford University; Anne Fernald, Stanford Univ

• Are early individual differences in pragmatic ability associated with SES and language experience? - Presenting Author: Danielle Matthews, University of Sheffield; Michelle McGillion, University of Sheffield; Gemma Stephens, University of Sheffield