LINGUAL SOPHISTICATION AND COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT [View all]

“Linguistic Deprivation A book published in the 1990s famously stated that by the age of three, a child of low socioeconomic status will have heard thirty million fewer words than her wealthier neighbor. The authors posited a deficit in pre-age-three language foundation might account for the long-observed relationship between poverty and subaverage vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension.

In short, disadvantaged children entered their pre-K and kindergarten classrooms unready for school. While the existence of a word gap has been disputed, the link between socioeconomic status and language, literacy, attention, and academic achievement is not questioned.

And a staggering amount of research shows an impoverished upbringing can adversely and directly affect the brain. Childhood poverty has been linked to atypical brain structure, function, rhythm, and symmetry, 45 including reduced size of the hippocampus, amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and other brain structures important for memory, emotion, and organizing ourselves. 46”

— Of Sound Mind: How Our Brain Constructs a Meaningful Sonic World by Nina Kraus