Though nearly all mothers in the East Palo Alto sample had less than a high school education, there was enough of a range within the sample to show that maternal education level was correlated with faster response times. Faster looks indicate faster cognitive processing, and quickness is correlated with positive long-term outcomes, such as better scores on third-grade standardized tests.įernald and her colleagues found that children’s speed in the looking-while-listening task could be predicted by their socioeconomic status, or SES. Children are seated in front of two pictures-say, a dog and a baby-and are asked to find one of the items: “Where’s the dog?” Researchers time how long it takes children to look toward the appropriate picture. The edamame-loving professors’ kids I’ve been testing are unlikely to be representative of an average child, or even an average American child.Īt the house, 18-, 24-, and 30-month-old children were tested on a task called “looking while listening.” It measures infants’ word processing skills in real time, and it’s beautifully simple. A huge amount of a child’s early life experience is determined by the family’s socioeconomic status-how wealthy and educated the child’s parents are. But there is growing evidence that the timing and efficiency with which children learn these general skills vary a lot based on experience. These things seem like they should work about the same way for any young human.
So I hardly bat an eye when a 4-year-old says, “My favorite food is edamame.”Īs a developmental psychologist, I test children to learn basic facts about kids, such as how they learn language, navigate social interactions, and gain knowledge. Vegan dinner fundraiser for your Burning Man art car? Of course. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area for the past few years, I’ve gotten used to lots of things that would probably seem strange in other cities.
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