Beyond the 30-Million-Word Gap: Children's Conversational Exposure Is Associated With Language-Related Brain Function.

ABSTRACT: Children's early language exposure impacts their later linguistic skills, cognitive abilities, and academic achievement, and large disparities in language exposure are associated with family socioeconomic status (SES). However, there is little evidence about the neural mechanisms underlying the relation between language experience and linguistic and cognitive development. Here, language experience was measured from home audio recordings of 36 SES-diverse 4- to 6-year-old children. During a story-listening functional MRI task, children who had experienced more conversational turns with adults-independently of SES, IQ, and adult-child utterances alone-exhibited greater left inferior frontal (Broca's area) activation, which significantly explained the relation between children's language expo

SUBMITTER: Romeo RR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5945324 | biostudies-literature | 2018 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature