Fostering Broad Oral Language Skills in Preschoolers from Low SES Background

Raffaele Dicataldo, Elena Florit and Maja Roch
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Raffaele Dicataldo: Department of Development and Socialization Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy
Elena Florit: Department of Human Sciences, University of Verona, 37129 Verona, Italy
Maja Roch: Department of Development and Socialization Psychology, University of Padova, 35131 Padova, Italy

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 12, 1-18

Abstract: Socioeconomic disparities increase the probability that children will enter school behind their more advantaged peers. Early intervention on language skills may enhance language and literacy outcomes, reduce the gap and, eventually, promote school readiness of low-SES (Socioeconomic Status) children. This study aimed to analyze the feasibility and effectiveness of a brief narrative-based intervention (treatment vs. control group) aimed to foster broad oral language skills in preschoolers (N = 69; Mean age = 5.5, SD = 4 months) coming from low-SES families. Moreover, it was analyzed whether children’s initial vocabulary mediates the intervention’s responsiveness. Results have shown that children in treatment group obtained greater gains than children in control group in almost all intervention-based measures. There is also some evidence for the generalizability of the intervention to other skills not directly trained during the intervention. Moreover, it was found that children’s initial vocabulary mediates the intervention’s responsiveness showing that children with high vocabulary made greater gains in higher-level components of language comprehension, whereas children with low vocabulary made higher gains in vocabulary. Taken together, our findings suggest that a relatively brief, but quite intensive narrative-based intervention, may produce improvements on broad oral language skills in preschoolers from low-SES backgrounds.

Keywords: narrative-based intervention; preschool; oral language development; socioeconomic status; classroom-based intervention (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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