Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children (Hardcover)

by Todd R. Risley (Author), Betty Hart (Author) "America in the 1960s found a cause worth committing to: the War on Poverty..." (more)
Key Phrases: significant family experience, preschool free play, vocabulary growth rates, Turner House, African American, Milwaukee Project (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
...alerts us to how much each person's future intellectual ability hinges upon his or her experience in the first year of life. -- Senator Thomas Daschle

Hart and Risley have condensed a large amount offunctional, practical, and very persuasive data... -- Asha

This establishes a definite, studied link between early childhood experiences and later intellectual development, providing a strong study which focuses on American childhood experiences and which analyzes the strong differences to be found between children at the same age levels. An excellent, thought-provoking study. -- Midwest Book Review

[This book] sheds fresh light on the still ongoing argument over the relative influences of nature and nurture... -- Child and Family Behavior Therapy

Product Description
This monumental book traces the complex issues involved with the intergenerational transmission of competence and unveils some astonishing predictors found in the simple interactions between parents and their 1- and 2-year-old children. Meticulously recorded data, presented in detective-like style that grabs each and every reader, provide the scientific evidence underlying an alarming gap between the vocabularies of children from educated, advantaged families and children from families of low socioeconomic status -a gap that translates into widely different academic and intellectual performances as the children grow. As its many endorsers attest, this book is an absolute requisite for professionals in psychology, child and social development, speech and language, education, and early intervention, as well as critical reading for concerned families and the nation's policy makers.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Paul H Brookes Pub Co; 1 edition (July 3, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1557661979
• ISBN-13: 978-1557661975
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #165,453 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of critical importance to parents, policy makerers, and edu, April 4, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Greenfield, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

Hart and Risley have created an easy to read volume that speaks readily to parents, policy makers and educators. This book is a must for anyone who truly wants to understand the relationship between the way we interact with children and the evolution of their intellectual development. If you are interested in poverty prevention, early literacy intervention or the impact of family based literacy on childrens' academic success, you will be inspired by the work of Hart Risley.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Serious implications for early child intervention efforts, March 27, 1997

By A Customer

This book is one of the by-products of one of the most dedicated efforts to understand variances in the development of language. One of the reviewers of the book states that the work "...is a detective story of the most serious academic kind." Yet the book is written in a manner that would allow it to be required reading for "Parenting 102" if not "Parenting 101". The implications for parenting and public policy are profound

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Classic, February 13, 2009

By	Paul Chance "author, The Teacher's Craft" (Delaware, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a contemporary classic. Published in 1995, in my opinion it remains one of the most important books ever published in the areas of developmental psychology, intelligence, and language development, and it has powerful implications for education.

Perhaps more than any other book, it undermines the nativist views of people like Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker. Nativists argue that cognitive development is largely an automatic process, the result of in-born brain mechanisms; experience makes little difference. What Hart & Risley found was that experience makes a profound difference. Children whose parents provide a rich linguistic environment are far more advanced linguistically and intellectually when they start school, and do far better in school, than children whose parents do not.

The study compares professional, working class and welfare families, so some may assume that the results merely reflect differences in genes: Poor kids don't do so well because the genes they inherit are just not as good. There's no denying that genes play a role in development, but what Hart & Risley found was that the quality and quantity of linguistic interactions, not income, was what predicted outcome. The children who did best were those who heard the most words, were given the most feedback, got the most positive feedback, and got the most complete answers to their questions.

One reviewer, a librarian, complains that the book's language is scholarly and jargony. It's true that this book does not read like a John Updike novel. It is, after all, the description and analysis of a scientific study. But as scholarly books go, this one is a breeze.

I believe most undergraduates majoring in psychology, early childhood development, and elementary education could read this book without difficulty and would find it interesting and useful. Many parents with a high school education would profit from the book. When this book first appeared I reviewed it in Psychology Today magazine and in Phi Delta Kappan. I should also have reviewed it on Amazon.com. I don't think I've reviewed any other book in three places, but this one deserves it. After all, it's a classic.