This TimesOnline (UK) story — detailing a recently-completed parent survey on the ages at which their children learned to speak — caught my attention for several reasons.
Firstly, because the “raw numbers” themselves are quite interesting — 3 seems disconcertingly late for speech to me, though that was a relatively small percentage of responders. And the gender splits are fascinating, if pretty much what I would have expected.
The second point of interest, though, was this particular paragraph:
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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The survey of more than 1,000 parents found that a child’s background was not a factor in how quickly they learnt to talk. Working parents who put their babies in day care are just as likely to have a child whose speech develops late as those who leave their baby in front of the television.
The “Day Care vs. TV” dichotomy seems like a peculiar one to me. I suppose its purpose is to address the “interaction vs. non-interaction” question, but the rest of the article focuses on the importance of direct, personal interaction between parents and their children, clearly indicating that not all interaction is created equal. So the “Day Care vs. TV” point seems to be comparing similar situations, rather than disparate ones. There’s no “versus” there.
Add the potentially problematic nature of that data point to the conclusion the survey seeks to draw from it — “a child’s background was not a factor in how quickly they learnt to talk” — and I found myself wondering if perhaps I’m taking something out of context. Can that possibly be supported by the survey, other than by means of the odd example it has chosen?
My own family of five boys may well be a statistically irrelevant number, but I can’t see any way to avoid the notion that a child’s background does factor into its linguistic development. My two youngest have been surrounded by “little talkers” from their earliest days — direct, personal, non-parent interaction — and they both would seem to have developed their language skills at a younger age than their siblings. Sure, there are differences from child to child, which makes it difficult to say anything scientifically definitive. But the claim that “background matters” seems like common-sense to me, and this study doesn’t convince me otherwise.
A final note of interest:
Ms. Gross said childhood health targets were too focused on obesity levels and immunisation rates at the expense of more subtle difficulties.