Final answer:
A family's socioeconomic status impacts children's word knowledge through the amount and nature of language exposure and interaction at home. Higher SES families provide a richer language environment which yields a larger vocabulary and better academic performance in their children. Efforts to provide linguistic stimulation across SES can greatly reduce these disparities.
Step-by-step explanation:
Socioeconomic status (SES) significantly contributes to differences in children's word knowledge through various mechanisms. Research by psychologists such as Betty Hart and Todd Risley has demonstrated that parent-child interactions vary across economic backgrounds, particularly in the quantity and quality of words children are exposed to.
Middle- and high-income families tend to speak more to their children, and this begins at infancy, leading to a substantial disparity in word knowledge by the age of three. These children knew almost twice the number of words as their low-income peers, a difference attributed to hearing an estimated 30 million more words.
This cognitive achievement gap is further widened as high-income children score 60% higher on tests before entering kindergarten than their low-income counterparts.
This gap in word knowledge and subsequent academic achievement can be linked to different approaches to parenting and available resources. Families with higher SES may have jobs that require creative problem-solving and judgment. Consequently, they can afford to provide a more stimulating linguistic environment, nurture creative thinking, and engage in activities that promote cognitive development.
On the other hand, lower-income families, which may face more time constraints and have less access to educational resources, might not be able to provide the same level of linguistic and cognitive stimulation.
However, interventions such as home visits by educators and specialized preschools for children from diverse economic backgrounds have shown that increased verbal interaction can result in significant linguistic development regardless of SES. These efforts emphasize the importance and potential of actions to reduce the achievement gap.