Language development in diverse circumstances – social disadvantage

Outline of social disadvantage:

 Socio-economic status is used most often to measure social disadvantage

 Factors such as family status, unemployment, poor health, high rates of offending behaviour
and increased use of mental health and social services are often associated with social
disadvantage. (Clegg & Ginsborg 2006)
 Delayed or disordered language development in childhood can be cause by a range of factors,
but many studies on children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds have shown the
children not necessarily reflecting the expectations when compared to others in their
demographic/age range. (Clegg & Ginsborg 2006)
How does social disadvantage influence language development:

 There is a body of research showing children from lower socio-economic backgrounds tend to
have less developed language skills. (Roulstone et al. 2011)
 Studies suggest that parents who have not experienced a responsive, language-rich
environment and could also have poor literacy, are not in a good position to provide positive
communication opportunities for their children. Additionally, parents who did not complete
secondary education are at risk of having children with limited language skills. This may be
cause of parents not necessarily knowing about communication development or how best to
encourage it. (Roulstone et al. 2011)
 Parents level of involvement has a major effect on a child learning, especially during the early
years of development. Middle class families have been shown to “actively cultivate” their
children by teaching them language, reasoning and negotiation skills. It’s been shown with
children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds that due having multiple stresses, parents
ability to interact with and actively cultivate their children is impaired. (Roulstone et al. 2011)
Minimizing negative influences of social disadvantage on language development:

 Studies of whole populations have revealed a clear social gradient for language, with infants
from the most disadvantaged groups having lower language skills than those in the least
disadvantaged groups. Many early intervention programmes have been developed and
evaluated, particularly interventions specifically talking both social disadvantage and
language development as an outcome. However these programmes are not widely available –
there is a need to scale up the interventions that have proved to work well, and have direct
sources to improve the services and meet the needs of children from more socially deprived
backgrounds who are at a much greater risk of having limited skills in language and
communication. (Law et al. 2013)