Preschool children vocabulary development and socioeconomic status.

İngilizce (OpenAlex)

Children’s early language development is under the influence of several positive and negative factors including television as an input source and family’s socio-economic status. Considering that, this study investigated the effects of these variables on children’s vocabulary development using a quasi-experimental design. To this end, 60 Iranian children, 30 from high and 30 from low socio-economic status, were selected using stratified random sampling. They were divided into four groups based on their background TV exposure and socio-economic status. TOLD-3 was given to the groups as a vocabulary development test before and after a 6-week observation. Results indicated that the high socio-economic-low background group scored higher than the other groups in the vocabulary development posttest while the low socio-economic-low background group scored lower that the other groups. Furthermore, while high background TV had a negative influence on the children’s vocabulary development in families with a high socio-economic status, it had a positive influence on the children in families with a low socio-economic status. These results have some implications for families, first and second language studies.