The thirty million
word gap
A fascinating study
brought to my attention by Dr. Galit Benzvi.
Hart and Risley conducted
observations to explore the effects of daily parent – child interactions on
language and vocabulary development. This
research was published in 2004.
They discovered that
up to the age of three, children from high SES families had been exposed to 30 million more words than
children from low SES families! This gap
only widened over the years.
Emotionally, up to
the age of three, children from high SES families had been exposed to 560000
more words of praise and encouragement than words of discouragement. Children raised in low SES families had been
exposed up to the age of three to 125000 more words of discouragement than encouragement.
A short summary of
this research appears here:
A more detailed (but
still short) summary appears here:
Language development has a great influence on cognitive
development. The consequences are clear:
early interventions in the public education system are not enough. There needs to be work with parents on their
linguistic interactions with their children at home.
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