The education word gap emerges by 18months: findings from an Australian prospective study

BACKGROUND: The idea of the 30 million word gap suggests families from more socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds engage in more verbal interactions with their child than disadvantaged families. Initial findings from the Language in Little Ones (LiLO) study up to 12months showed no word gap between maternal education groups. METHODS: Families with either high or low maternal education were purposively recruited into a five-year prospective study. We report results from the first three waves of LiLO when children were 6, 12 and 18months old. Day-long audio recordings, obtained using the Language Environment Analysis software, provided counts of adult words spoken to the child, child vocalizations and conversational turns. RESULTS: By the time children were 18months old all three measures of talk were 0.5 to 0.7 SD higher among families with more education, but with large variation within education groups. Changes in talk from 6 to 18months highlighted that families from low educated backgrounds were decreasing the amount they spoke to their children (4219.54, 95% CI -6054.13, 2384.95), compared to families from high educated backgrounds who remained relatively stable across this age period (369.13, 95% CI 2344.57, 1606.30). CONCLUSIONS: The socioeconomic word gap emerges between 12 and 18months of age. Interventions to enhance maternal communication, child vocalisations and vocabulary development should begin prior to 18months. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12887-021-02712-1.