The role of socioeconomic factors in language development in young Lebanese children

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Early language development has a great influence onchildren's overall wellbeing and later academic success. Whileoral language development may proceed at a relatively fastpace in the early years, there is considerable variation acrosschildren that is linked to external (environmental, social andeconomic status) and internal (perceptual, cognitive andlinguistic) factors. In terms of external factors, socioeconomicstatus (SES) has been shown to powerfully predict languagedevelopment, in the Western world. Yet, little is known abouthow this or other SES factors play out in a non-Westerncontext. This study aims to fill this gap by defining contextspecificSES factors that are relevant to Lebanon and thenexamining any potential associations between these factorsand early language development. We aim to recruit 480families of children aged between 12 and 48 months, balancedfor gender, geographical regions and SES. Two questionnaireswill be administered to parents: a socio-demographicquestionnaire eliciting data on the families' SES and asociolinguistic questionnaire eliciting data on their languagepractices and beliefs and their involvement in supportinglanguage development. Measures of the children's earlylanguage skills (vocabulary and grammar) will be obtainedthroughout the use of the parental CDI-L report as well asrecorded language samples of spontaneous interactionsbetween children and their parents. Results of this study willenable Early Years professionals working with Arabic-speakingchildren to identify early risk and protective indicatorsassociated with later language skills, to support the design ofpreventative efficient interventions and to enhance schoolreadiness.