early-childhood language deficits in poverty?
William Raspberry wrote about a study showing a vast gap in early exposure to language between upper- and lower-class children, correlating with their 3rd-grade language achievement and IQ. This study has been widely cited, and is surely very important work. However, Language Log provides some criticism of how the information has been used, given that the study had a very small sample of the poorest families (six). It is very unfortunate that no one has followed up on the study with a larger sample.