Purpose:
This article aims to raise speech-language pathologists' (SLPs') awareness about the extent of social inequalities in the language development of children, and their social determinants.
Method:
This article draws on empirical evidence and theoretical foundations from the field of public health to highlight the roots and distribution of social inequalities in the language development of children. The Total Environment Assessment Model for Early Child Development is presented as a means to understand the social determinants of early child development, and its relevance to the context of early language development is discussed. Informed by these theoretical notions, this article encourages SLPs to reflect on actions directed toward the social determinants of language. Drawing from health promotion approaches, a conceptualization of language interventions and intervention outcomes as “events in systems” is suggested.
Conclusion:
The public health–inspired approach to language interventions shared in this article invites institutions and SLPs to direct their gaze to the social determinants of language and broaden the scope of actions that are included in individual or group interventions aimed at supporting the language development of children.
The goals of this study were twofold: (1) to compare the pragmatic language skills (i.e., social communication skills) of 42-month-old neglected children with those of same-aged non-neglected children and (2) to measure the prevalence of pragmatic difficulties among the neglected children. The study sample was composed of 45 neglected and 95 non-neglected 42-month-old French-speaking children. The Language Use Inventory: French (LUI-French) was completed with all parents. This measure, comprised of 159 scored items divided into 10 subscales, was used to assess the children’s pragmatic skills. The 10th percentile on the LUI-French (95% confidence interval ) was used to identify children with pragmatic difficulties. The neglected children had lower scores than the non-neglected children on all 10 dimensions of pragmatics evaluated ( p < .01), as well as lower LUI-French Total Scores ( p < .001). The effect sizes of these differences varied between 0.84 and 2.78. Forty-four percent of the neglected children presented significant pragmatic difficulties compared to 4.2% of their non-neglected peers ( p < .001). It can be concluded that exposure to neglect significantly compromises children’s pragmatic skills. These results support the need for interventions geared toward neglected children and their families to support the early development of their pragmatic skills.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.