SES variation in language input and comprehension outcomes in Argentinean toddlers

ROSEMBERG, C. R.; ALAM, F.; STEIN, A.; MIGDALEK, M.; MENTI, A.; CRISTIA, A.

Congreso; IASCL 2017; 2017

IASCL

Previous research documents profound differences in both input and outcome as a function of familial socio-economic status (SES; e.g., Huttenlocher et al., 2002). Most have studied relatively educated and rich populations, e.g. incomplete high school versus college graduates in the US. Current results regarding these educational ranges for Spanish learners suggest weaker relationships between SES and language acquisition (De Anda et al., 2015). Are effects of SES similar in other cultures and other educational ranges?We are carrying out a longitudinal project with 63 toddlers (mean age at the start: 14 months), 36 from middle SES (mean length of parents? education: 20 years) and 27 from low SES (mean length of parents? education: 9 years). We recorded their early linguistic experiences repeatedly; 2 hours from an initial audio-recording gathered from 10 children in each SES group have been fully transcribed. Additionally, vocabulary comprehension was assessed about 15 months after the start of the study, with a touch-screen test built such that all stimuli had similar token frequency in middle and low SES households in Argentina, in order to prevent cultural bias affecting the children?s performance.Group comparisons suggest that low-SES children hear significantly lower numbers of tokens, less lexically diverse speech addressed in shorter utterances than mid-SES children; however, they overhear more speech, such that overall quantities are not significantly different. Moreover vocabulary comprehension scores are lower for low-SES than mid-SES children. Ongoing analyses assess potential links between some aspects of the input and children?s comprehension performance. Overall, it appears that SES differences in language input and outcome reported in previous studies are also evident in the present, widely diverse sample. Future work using meta-analytic methods may be able to assess whether SES differences are stable in size across cultures and educational ranges.