Early Struggles In Vocabulary Development 
Can Hamper Economically Disadvantaged Children 

from Penn State University Sociologists

April 11, 2001 

University Park, Pa. -- When socioeconomically deprived children fall
behind in spoken vocabulary development during their first three years of
life, they are very likely to have lifelong struggles in all their studies
in school. Even current early intervention programs such as Head Start may
not be enough to close this learning gap, says a Penn State researcher. 

"Those children in our society who grow up in poverty or near poverty are
adversely affected by their mother's own vocabulary deficit during their
earliest years when they are learning to speak at home," says Dr. George
Farkas, professor of sociology. 

"Social class differences in vocabulary growth emerge at the very earliest
ages among both Black and White Americans, and they attain a substantial
magnitude by 36 months of age," Farkas notes. "These social class
differences widen during the fourth and fifth years of life, although this
occurs more strongly among African-Americans than among Whites. Half of
the social class differences in vocabulary growth rates can be traced to
the differences in family linguistic instruction provided by mothers of
varying social classes." 

By the time children reach age 6 and the first grade, they are learning to
read, and from that point their vocabulary development, regardless of
class or race, proceeds roughly at the same pace. Unfortunately for
disadvantaged children, their earlier deficiencies in vocabulary learning
will continue to have long-term repercussions in their teenage years,
especially in the areas of vocabulary, reading and mathematics. 

In adult years, the consequences are often low-skill and poorly paid jobs
that perpetuate the cycle of poverty, according to Farkas, a faculty
member in Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts and a faculty associate
with Penn State's Population Research Institute. 

Farkas and Dr. Kurt Beron of the School of Social Sciences at the
University of Texas at Dallas, presented their findings, "Family
Linguistic Culture and Social Reproduction: Verbal Skill from Parent to
Child in the Preschool and School Years," recently at the annual meeting
of the Population Association of America in Washington, D.C. 

Between 1986 and 1996, data were collected from several thousand children
between the ages of 3 and 14, including the Peabody Picture Vocabulary
Test (PPVT), comprised of 175 increasingly difficult words. The tester
read the word to the child, who then pointed to one of the 4 pictures that
best described its meaning. When the child failed to identify 6 out of 8
consecutive items, the test ended, and the child was assigned a score or
"ceiling." 

"By analyzing these data according to the child's month of age, beginning
at 36 months, we were able to examine the trajectory of oral vocabulary
growth by social class in unprecedented detail," Farkas notes. 

The researchers also compared the child's progress in vocabulary
development with the mother's "linguistic cultural capital" as determined
by the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). Given to this particular
sample of women in 1980, the AFQT measures skills and habits of vocabulary
and speech. 

"It is not enough that the mother herself have a good vocabulary," the
Penn State researcher says. "It is also necessary for mothers to teach
letters to their babies, talk out loud to them and read books to them
regularly and consistently. "This is much less likely to happen when the
mother is trapped on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder and is
consumed by financial and emotional pressures or stresses, he adds. 

The authors conclude that federal and local programs and policies must be
aimed at improving the early vocabulary development and school readiness
skills of children from low-income households. In particular, the Bush
administration's emphasis on improving the letter, sound, word recognition
and pre-reading skills instruction provided by Head Start and similar
programs is well-targeted on an important instructional area, which is
vital to the schooling success of low-income children, Farkas notes. 


EDITORS: Dr. Farkas is at (814) 865-6428 at gfarkas@pop.psu.edu by email.