1-041 - How 'Vocabulary Gaps' Become 'Knowledge Gaps': From Research to Intervention to Implications for Education and Policy

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

There is now a national conversation about the importance of providing support for children in the earliest months and years of life. Developmental science has an important role to play in guiding and informing this conversation. This symposium brings together developmental researchers from diverse disciplines to present new findings on the critical importance of parental engagement.

(1) The first speaker – a psychologist who combines observational and experimental research strategies to understand language learning by a diverse range of children – provides an overview of new research on how SES-related differences in children’s early language environments influence later learning trajectories. (2) The second speaker - a pediatrician committed to designing effective programs to support parents’ engagement with their young children - focuses on intervention design, presenting new findings from the innovative Thirty Million Words initiative. (3) The third speaker - a leader in research on how early knowledge disparities have cascading consequences for the academic success of children growing up in poverty - offers a unique perspective from the vantage point of service in the U.S. Department of Education. She presents research on how early differences in oral language affect literacy and the ability to reason analytically, creating knowledge gaps with detrimental consequences for educational opportunity. (4) The discussant - a psychologist who studies effects of economic conditions and SES on parental behavior and child development – brings an economic perspective to the discussion of policy implications to be drawn from the wide range of research findings presented here.

Sub Unit

• School Readiness/Childcare

Chair

• Anne Fernald, Stanford Univ

Discussant

• Ariel Kalil, University of Chicago

Individual Presentations

• Language Gaps between Rich and Poor Children Begin to Emerge in Infancy - Presenting Author: Anne Fernald, Stanford Univ; Nereyda M. Hurtado, Stanford University; Adriana Weisleder, New York University; Virginia A. Marchman, Stanford University

• Thirty Million Words Initiative: Enhancing Parent-Child Verbal Engagement in a Translational Research Program - Presenting Author: Dana Suskind, University of Chicago

• Giving our Children a Fighting Chance: Poverty, Literacy Development and Information Capital - Presenting Author: Susan B. Neuman, New York University