Poverty Effects on Oral Language Development: Birth to Third Grade

Early Language Disorders

In the first five years of life, humans experience rapid brain development that can be favorably or adversely affected by interactions with others and the environment (Clark, Van Dyke, Tussey & Haas, 2021). Beginning with attention to caregiver eye gaze, infants begin to draw meaning from spoken language (Cetincelik, Rowland, & Snijders, 2021). Eye gaze has been widely studied by researchers seeking to understand infant language acquisition. Barry, Estes, and Rivera (2015) found that infants attend to nonverbal cues given by adults, including eye gaze, and these cues along with spoken language, direct infant attention to critical information in object and information-rich environments. Furthermore, Golinkoff, et. al. (2019), reiterated the existence of a language gap based on SES and influenced by the amount of language infants are exposed to at an early age. These early skills combined with the ability to identify regularities in the physical environment appear to support receptive language development, the basis for later expressive language.