Why Do Richer Families Have Babies With Better Language Skills?

February 13, 2009 by tanya
Filed under: News

New research released this week indicates that the income and education levels of parents is linked to the ability of a baby to use hand gestures and to develop strong language skills.

Study author Meredith Rowe said “The children who are gesturing about more things in their environment have larger vocabularies later,” said added “And we see that children from higher socioeconomic levels are gesturing more.”

The findings were published in today’s issue of Science. Rowe and her researchers compared results of 50 children around Chicago when they were 14 months old and then when they were 4 ½ years-old. The study included video footage of the children interacting with their parents at home.

Children who gestured with their parents more at 14 months were found to have a higher vocabulary level at 4 ½ years-old.

The study also found that the income and education levels of the parents contributed to the child’s speech development.

One possible theory is that households with a higher income may have more toys and furniture, and provide families with more opportunities to use gestures in conversations.

It could also be that there are fewer children in higher income families, and there may be more free time available to the parents.

“Above and beyond what children and parents say with their words, what they do with their hands is important for how children develop language,” Spencer Kelly, a gesture researcher at Colgate University in New York explains. “These results fit with recent research demonstrating that hand gestures enhance learning and memory in educational contexts, such as gaining new math skills or acquiring new words in a foreign language.”

Overall, the study shows that use of gesture appears to increase a child’s vocabulary, which may give the child a head start in life. The research did not prove that children from lower income families gesture less and have lower vocabularies.