Parental educational level, language characteristics and children who are late to talk

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of parental educational level and language use on the linguistic development of children who are late to talk (CWLT). Participants were 20 CWLT (mean age = 29.9 months) whose parents ranged in educational level from high school to law school graduates. Methods involved multiple home visits over an 8-month period to observe parent-child interaction and measure child vocabulary growth. Findings indicated that parental educational level was positively associated with child mean-length-of-utterance, and that the number of different words used by parents was positively associated with children's receptive language skills. However, parental educational level had no apparent statistical effect on parental language measures nor on child vocabulary growth. These findings were taken to suggest that: (1) though some parents provided richer language input to their CWLT, this richness was independent of parental educational level; (2) though CWLT varied significantly in vocabulary growth rates, these variations were not accounted for by parental educational level; and (3) CWLT did benefit from hearing a variety of words, though this benefit did not extend to their expressive language. Thus, while lower levels of parental education, for this sample of CWLT, do not appear to constitute an additional risk factor for their delayed language development, one might suggest, based on present findings, that parents be encouraged to use a variety of words with their CWLT, even though the children may not immediately produce the words themselves.