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Category: Project

Description: Despite support for the importance of early language environments, little is known about the naturally occurring experiences children have in preschool settings. The current study sample included 91 children (Mage = 4.72 years; 56% male; 67% White) from 23 preschool classrooms and nearly 1,500 hours of language environment data from three waves throughout the preschool year. Of the sociodemographic characteristics, family income most closely related to children’s preschool language environments. A standard deviation increase in family income was related to children hearing approximately one million more adult words in their preschool classroom. However, conversational turns were the more robust predictor of vocabulary skills with effect sizes around .20, depending on model specification. Theoretical and policy implications of these findings are discussed. Data is currently available by request only (please submit requests to Robert Duncan, duncan99@purdue.edu). Once data entry is complete on this project, we plan to destroy all existing identifiers associated with the project and make the data publicly available on this page.