She duplicated the experimental setup of her Stanford-based lab in a 30-feet-long RV and drove to a city a few hours north of campus, where the median household income and education levels are much lower on average than in the Bay Area. To include a broader range of children in her research, Fernald took her lab on the road. Since children in these higher SES families have many other advantages as well, the results of such research do not represent the majority of children living in less privileged circumstances in the United States. Research conducted in university laboratories commonly relies on a "convenience sample" of local participants who are usually affluent and highly educated. Follow-up tests six months later measured how these skills developed. In an experiment designed to investigate children's vocabulary and language processing speed, Anne Fernald, a Stanford associate professor of psychology, enrolled 20 children, 18 months old, who lived near the Stanford campus, and tested how quickly and accurately they identified objects based on simple verbal cues. The study, published in Developmental Science, is the first to identify an "achievement gap" in language processing skill at such a young age and could inform strategies to intervene and bring children up to speed. Stanford researchers have now found that these socioeconomic status (SES) differences begin to emerge much earlier in life: By 18 months of age, toddlers from disadvantaged families are already several months behind more advantaged children in language proficiency. ![]() By some measures, 5-year-old children of lower socioeconomic status score more than two years behind on standardized language development tests by the time they enter school. ![]() A mother and child are greeted by Jillian Maes, part of Stanford's team of researchers led by Professor Anne Fernald.įifty years of research has revealed the sad truth that the children of lower-income, less-educated parents typically enter school with poorer language skills than their more privileged counterparts.
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