Lexical skills in 4-year-old pre-schoolers : effects of socio-economic status

Abstract

Past studies have shown that various factors associated with socioeconomic status (SES), such as the quality and quantity of child-directed language use during parent-child interaction, influence child vocabulary growth to varying degrees. Even so, opposing views exist in the literature and local research on the topic is scarce. The present research sought to investigate the effects of SES on the lexical skills of typically-developing Maltese-dominant preschoolers between the ages of 4;00 and 4;04 years. Forty-six typically-developing children were recruited from 10 different state schools spread all over the country. Fifteen subjects were categorised as low-SES, 18 were categorised as medium-SES and 13 were categorised as high-SES. Participants were assessed using Maltese and English versions of Receptive Picture Name Judgement (RPNJ) and Picture Naming tasks which measured their lexical comprehension and production skills respectively. Data was analysed quantitatively using statistical tools to note differences in lexical performance scores according to the children’s SES category and to investigate respective correlations between the two variables. Patterns of lexical mixing were also examined. The larger sample’s performance on the different lexical tasks was also compared across language versions. Overall, participants scored higher on the English picture naming task when compared to the Maltese version and higher on the Maltese RPNJ task when compared to the English version. Results indicate that SES has a significant impact on English lexical production skills and also on English receptive and Maltese production skills, to a lesser degree. Furthermore, SES was found to impact patterns of lexical mixing. While there was an increase in English lexical mixing with an increase in SES, an increase in Maltese lexical mixing presented with a decrease in SES.