"Let's
Stop Talking About the Thirty-Million Word Gap," published June 1 on NPR Ed's website,
took a fresh look at what has become a familiar phrase. Citing two
recent studies that attempt to quantify, with modern technology and
larger sample sizes, the number of words heard by children of
varying socio-economic levels, the article also addresses the
"whole idea of a gap," quoting criticism that views "the 'word gap'
concept as racially and culturally loaded in a way that ultimately
hurts the children whom early intervention programs [are]
ostensibly trying to help."
The first study, "Mapping the Early
Language Environment" (Gilkerson et al, American Journal of
Speech-Language Pathology, May 2017) used "the Language Environment
Analysis (LENA) System to generate estimates of (a) the number of
adult words in the child's environment, (b) the amount of
caregiver-child interaction, and (c) the frequency of child vocal
output." It found that "Lower socioeconomic status (SES) children
produced fewer vocalizations, engaged in fewer adult-child
interactions, and were exposed to fewer daily adult words compared
with their higher socioeconomic status peers, but within-group
variability was high." [emphasis added]
That last phrase highlights one of the ways Hart and Risley has
been misinterpreted: overgeneralizing the findings as if they apply
to all families in a particular SES status--which can lead to
implicit blame of low-income families, and a failure to search for
commonalities based on quality of language exposure rather than
SES.
The
second study,
"Reexamining the Verbal Environments of Children From Different
Socioeconomic Backgrounds," (Sperry, Sperry and Miller, Child
Development, April 30, 2018) addresses this issue directly,
revealing "substantial variation in vocabulary environments within
each socioeconomic stratum, and suggest[ing] that definitions of
verbal environments that exclude multiple caregivers and bystander
talk disproportionately underestimate the number of words to which
low‐income children are exposed."
However, a critique of the latter study,
"Talking With Children Matters: Defending the 30 Million Word
Gap," (Hirsh-Pasek, et al, Brookings.edu, May 21, 2018), points
out that without an upper-middle-class cohort for comparison, the
disparity in the number of language interactions cannot be
measured--and it is the disparity that leads to the relative
disadvantage for
children of all SES who have fewer reciprocal verbal
interactions. In addition, the article points out that, while the
Sperry study measures the number of words heard in the child's
environment, rather than "conversational turns," it is the
reciprocal nature of those "serve-and-return" interactions that
supports not only language development but also secure
attachment.
What do these alternative perspectives mean for Reach Out and
Read? National Medical Director Perri Klass MD reminds us that
there is a great deal of data to support the finding that
disparities in early environment and parent-child interactions have
an impact on child development, but that it is also true that many
factors besides SES affect a child's home environment and
relational experiences. Our job always is to support parents,
across all circumstances of SES and family situations, while
remembering that poverty imposes additional stresses with which
families must cope.
We know that it is very important to guard against any
suggestion of blaming poor parents for the circumstances of
poverty, and that we should never equate parenting in poverty with
poor parenting. It's useful and helpful to think about the
complexities of early stimulation and a positive environment, and
about the complexities of language and interaction and relational
health--and that helping parents and children look at books
together and talk about them fosters language interaction and
"conversational: turn-taking, as well as enriched vocabulary. This
should help us to work toward a better understanding of what works
to support parents, and to help them use reading together and
looking at picture books to help their children grow and
develop.