Supermarket Speak: Increasing Talk Among Low-Socioeconomic Status Families

Children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) families often fall behind their middle-class peers in early language development. But interventions designed to support their language skills are often costly and labor-intensive. This study implements an inexpensive and subtle language intervention aimed at sparking parent–child interaction in a place that families naturally visit: the supermarket. We placed signs encouraging adult–child dialogue in supermarkets serving lowand mid-SES neighborhoods. Using an unobtrusive observational methodology, we tested how these signs affected adult–child interactions. When signs were present in supermarkets serving low-SES neighborhoods, both the amount and the quality of talk between adults and children increased significantly, compared to when the signs were not present; signs had little effect in middle-SES supermarkets. This study demonstrates that implementing simple, cost-effective interventions in everyday environments may bolster children’s language development and school readiness skills. Children from low-socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds often have different language trajectories than children of 1Department of Psychology, Temple University 2School of Education, University of Delaware Address correspondence to Katherine E. Ridge, Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota, 51 East River Parkway, MN 55455; e-mail: [email protected]. † Present address: Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 3401 Walnut Street, PA 19104 ‡ Present address: Department of Psychology, Bilkent University, Bilkent 06800, Ankara, Turkey upper-SES backgrounds. Low-SES children trail nearly half a standard deviation (0.47) behind mid-SES children and 1.17 standard deviations below high-SES children on standard language measures at the start of kindergarten (Lee & Burkham, 2002). Gaps between children of lowand high-SES on various measures of language ability are consistently found early in life, with disparities in comprehension evident as early as 9 months (Halle et al., 2009) and in processing and production measures in toddlerhood (Fernald, Marchman, & Weisleder, 2013; see Hoff, 2006 for a review). These language differences are strong predictors of school readiness and academic achievement (Dickinson&McCabe, 2001; Gershoff, 2003). Because of the importance of language skills in development, we report the results of a novel, low-cost intervention aimed at increasing adult–child linguistic interaction. We chose to focus on adult–child conversations because these are the main sources from which young children learn vocabulary and linguistic skills. Conversations with adults help children learn facts and concepts, encourage them to express their ideas through language, and help them learn to ask questions. These behaviors all build more complex ideas and concepts (Neuman, 2001). Contingent interactions with sensitive and responsive adults, like those in conversations, are an especially important component of language development (Roseberry, Hirsh-Pasek, &Golinkoff, 2014; Tamis-Lemonda, Bornstein, & Baumwell, 2001; Tamis-LeMonda, Bornstein, Baumwell, & Damast, 1996). Indeed, verbal responsiveness directly predicts concurrent and subsequent language development. Thirteen-month-old infants whose parents are more verbally responsive show earlier onset of their first word and of their first fifty words (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 1996). Volume 9—Number 3 © 2015 International Mind, Brain, and Education Society and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 127