New Research from Stanford Finds an Achievement Gap at 18 Months | Eye on Early Education

New Research from Stanford Finds an Achievement Gap at 18 Months | Eye on Early Education:

New Research from Stanford Finds an Achievement Gap at 18 Months

November 11, 2013 by Alyssa Haywoode

Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children

When do achievement gaps begin to take root? A new study from Stanford University found that by 18 months, “toddlers from disadvantaged families are already several months behind more advantaged children in language proficiency,” according to a Stanford News article. However, parents of all income levels can help close this gap, according to the study’s author.

Decades of research already pointed to early achievement gaps among children, including the well-known Hart-Risley study, which found that children from higher-income families hear and acquire more words than their lower income peers. By age three, children showed marked differences in their vocabularies.

Building on past efforts, the Stanford study, which was published in Developmental Science, “is the first to identify an ‘achievement gap’ in language processing skills at such a young age and could inform strategies to intervene and bring children up to speed,” the article continues.

Anne Fernald, a Stanford psychology professor, conducted the study. She started by assessing a convenient sample of 20 18-month-olds who were