Semester 1 Week 8 - Language development and SES Flashcards
what 4 things come under SES
- maternal education
- family income
- characteristics of area of residence
- parental occupation
6 ways to measure SES
• Post code data (e.g. English indices of deprivation data)
• Means tested, low income indicators (e.g. free school meals in the UK, healthcare benefit card in Australia)
• Mothers completed last year of school versus not
• Family literacy measures (e.g. reading test scores)
• Estimation of number of books in the home
• Poverty line (e.g. £17,760 in UK for a family of 4).
what proportion of people in the UK live in poverty?
1 in 5
what percentage of children in the UK live in poverty?
29%
3 types of capital
- financial
- cultural (debated)
- social
3 types of social capital
- bonding
- bridging
- linking
what is bonding (social capital)?
social capital is derived from relationships between similar groups of people (e.g. those alike with respect to sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics)
what is bridging (social capital)?
social capital is derived from dissimilar persons at the same level of hierarchy.
what is linking (social capital)?
social capital is conceptualised as relationships between persons across levels of hierarchy and power
when are children defined as being disadvantaged
Pupils are now defined as disadvantaged if they are known to have been eligible for free school meals at any point (from Year 6 to Year 11), if they are recorded as having been looked after for at least one day or if they are recorded as having been adopted from care.
what % of pupils at the end of KS4 in state funded schools were recorded as being disadvantaged?
~25%
is SES considered to be associated with language delay?
yes
what is positionality?
The social and political context that creates your identity in terms of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability status
what does maternal language input have significant consequences for?
- childrens vocab, syntax and langauge processing skills
- cognitive skills such as executive function
- mathematical skills
- social skills
why should population studies be treated with caution? (2)
Risk for late language emergence at 24 months was not associated with particular strata of parental educational levels, socioeconomic resources, parental mental health, parenting practices, or family functioning
Risk factors at 2 years accounted for a small amount of variance in language outcomes.
what were significant predictors at 24 months for risk of late language emergence?
- family history of LLE
- male gender
- early neurobiological growth
what are 4 environmental explanations for difference in language competence within social disadvantage?
- maternal education
- quality of child directed speech from the primary care giver
- the mother’s sensitivity - ‘prompt and appropriate’ responses and how closely aligned the mother’s talk is to the child’s gaze
- meausrable quality of mother-child interactions
why is maternal input so heavily featured as opposed to other caregivers?
some reseach has investgated fathers’ language input/ influence of other family members but overwhelming drive of research is directed at mothers
what are some of the problems with using language socialisation as a predictor for langauge outcomes?
language socialisation is socio-culturally defined and inconsistent across global cultures due to differing practices
what is seen in societies where there is very little direct interaction with infants
children still seem to reach linguistic milestones at a similar rate
mothers in some cultures do not routinely direct speech to babies with no lasting consequences for children’s language skills
what is the outcome of most intervention studies and why is this problematic?
Often change the language environment, despite a lack of evidence for what constitutes an ‘appropriate environment’ and what aspects of poverty affect language.
criticisms of interventions
Critics have argued that such interventions might have the opposite effect; causing harm to those families they are designed to help
