It requires understanding that cognition, motivation, emotion, and behavior are shaped by individuals’ cultural values and norms. Interpretive power refers to the ability to understand individuals’ experiences and behaviors in relation to their cultural contexts. The criticisms raised illustrate a problem that we suggest results from a lack of interpretive power in psychological science. While psychological scientists surely have something to learn from both iterations of the “word gap” study, we have equally as much to learn from the debate itself. In fact, using more expansive measurements of words children heard at home, Sperry and colleagues found that children in some lower-income communities heard more words than wealthy children did. Thus, in cultural contexts in which extended family plays a large role in child rearing, focusing on the primary caregiver’s language may result in an incomplete representation of the richness of a child’s linguistic environment. Children in other cultural contexts hear a great deal of language from other caregivers (e.g., siblings, extended family) and their ambient environments, but Hart and Risley excluded this language. Others argued Hart and Risley’s narrow focus on words spoken by a primary caregiver to a child reflected White, middle-class cultural norms. Others questioned their methodology, speculating that the anxiety of being observed by educated White researchers could cause poor Black parents to speak less to their children than they normally would. Many suggested Hart and Risley conflated race and social class, as a majority of the poor families were Black while a majority of the wealthy families were White. Some critiqued Sperry and colleagues’ measurement and conclusions, while others focused on the initial study’s limitations. This publication incited widespread debate. Using Hart and Risley’s measurement of words spoken to a child by a primary caregiver, Sperry and colleagues found inconsistent support for a word gap among a more diverse sample of wealthy and poor families. Sperry (Indiana State University), and Peggy J Miller (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) published analyses of five studies that called in question the existence and magnitude of a “word gap”. Sperry (Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College), Linda L. Twenty-three years after Hart and Risley’s book appeared, however, Douglas E. The Obama administration, for example, launched a campaign to raise awareness about the “30-million word gap.” Interventions encouraging low-income parents to talk to their children gained traction even at the highest levels of US government. Furthermore, they argued that the number of words children hear early in life predicts later academic outcomes, potentially contributing to socioeconomic educational disparities. Risley made a splash with their influential book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, in which they estimated that by age 4, poor children heard 32 million fewer words than wealthy children did. In 1995, psychological scientists Betty Hart and Todd R.
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