Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental influence: Socioeconomic status affects early vocabulary development via maternal speech.

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Hoff, E. (2003). The specificity of environmental
influence Socioeconomic status affects early
vocabulary development via maternal speech.

• Theory
• Ample data has demonstrated a correlation between
  SES and childrens language development
• This study tested the hypothesis that SES-related
  differences in the development of childrens
  productive vocabulary can be explained by
  SES-related differences in their
  language-learning experiences (i.e., they are
  trying to show cause)
• Methods
• 33 high-SES and 30 mid-SES monolingual English
  mom-child dyad children matched for vocabularies
  at time 1
• Pre-measures of maternal speech
• Pre-and post-measures of childrens vocabulary

Key insight
SES
Vocabulary growth
SES-related properties of maternal speech

• Strengths
• Explains relationship between SES and childrens
  language development
• Controlled for birth order
• Weaknesses
• Only looked at high- and mid-SES families other
  factors may be at work in low-SES families
• Only 1 observation to assess maternal speech
  only 2 observations to assess childrens vocabs
• Possible age confound children were matched on
  vocab skills, not age, which ranged from 16-31 mos

• Findings
• SES significantly related to childrens vocab
  growth
• SES significantly related to maternal speech (
  word tokens, word types, mean length
  utterances)
• SES-related maternal speech properties
  significantly related to childrens vocabulary
  growth
• After variance attributable to birth order and
  child vocab at Time 1 was removed, properties of
  maternal speech accounted for 22 of variance in
  child outcome, leaving only a nonsignificant 1
  of variance in child vocab growth attributable to
  SES
• Thus, maternal speech properties mediate
  relationship between SES and childrens vocab
  development