Thread by @RachelRRomeo

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john Hi! Thanks for the interest in our work! However, I feel the need to correct an inaccurate and potentially harmful narrative in your phrasing, and how our study relates to it, if you’ll allow me. This will take a few tweets.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john First is the phrase “30 million word gap.” This term has gotten a lot of mileage, and I confess to having used it earlier in my career without fully understanding its impact – that’s on me. But it’s not accurate or helpful, and I have work to do to correct it.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john First, it’s not accurate. The research that popularized this term was based on an extrapolation of a small slice of life, and @davidjpurpura has shown that it’s scientifically implausible for a gap that large to arise in a few short years doi.org/10.1111/cdev.1…

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura Research with more modern methods (@LENAEarlyTalk) finds that SES differences in kids’ language environments are much smaller, and that the variation within SES groups are MUCH larger than those between groups doi.org/10.1044/2016_A…

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk More importantly, phrasing it as a gap is deficit language & suggests that there is a “right” and “wrong” way to enculturate children. Deficit language perpetuates a “blame the victim” narrative that lower income families are solely responsible for their child’s academic success.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk But this ignores the systemic challenges (esp in US) that inevitably influence parents’ provisions of learning environments. For example, @mellwoodlowe recently showed that the stress of financial scarcity reduces the speech parents direct to children doi.org/10.1111/desc.1…

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk @mellwoodlowe That brings me to the phrasing about this being a “solution.” A solution to a problem as big as SES disparities in child outcomes cannot only focus on parents as the only change agent. It would require massive paradigm shifts in every sector of society.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk @mellwoodlowe This is why the conclusion of our paper was not to scale this intervention as the answer, but rather to “support families” through “multi-pronged approaches” & “reduce barriers that impede caregivers’ ability to spend time with children and engage in conversational turn-taking.”

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk @mellwoodlowe And on that note, part of the point of focusing on turn-taking is to try to shift the discussion away from a singular focus on the sheer number of words children hear. Of course they are correlated, but it’s an important distinction I care a lot about.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk @mellwoodlowe So then, what is the purpose of this work? I intend it as basic science to understand mechanisms. I want to know how our experiences influence brain development, & in the case of this paper, to understand how changes in experience relate to neuroplasticity.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk @mellwoodlowe Of course broader implications are inevitable, and that’s where the interpretation is critical. Hence this tweet thread to do my small part to try reign in the interpretation to what it is and what it isn’t.

@Heino1Olli @gabrieli_john @davidjpurpura @LENAEarlyTalk @mellwoodlowe Finally, please know that this reply was not meant with malice. It’s really hard work to change entrenched narratives, but I believe it is our responsibility to use our privilege and platforms to do so. I'm working on it 😀