The amount that parents speak to their toddlers can directly affect how quickly they process language and grow their vocabularies, according to research from Sanford University.
Researchers recorded children in their home environments, finding that some heard as many as 12,000 words a day, while one as few as 670. Children who experienced more child-directed speech had larger vocabularies by 24 months, compared to children who had heard less child-directed speech.
In general, children with a lower socio-economic status have lower language proficiency scores than more advantaged children. The new work helps illustrate the mechanism for these disparities and suggests ways to reduce the language gap.
Read more at Stanford University