Social Class and the Speech of Four Year Olds : the Effect of Intelligence

Abstract

In the first experiment reported in this study, four year old children from middle and lower class homes were matched in pairs according to their non-verbal intelligence test scores, and their speech was compared with that of a similar group of four year olds in a second experiment, who had not been matched for intelligence. Speech was elicited from the children in both experiments by the use of a picture strip technique, and analysed according to traditional grammar. Few social class differences emerged in the speech of the first group of four year olds, but in the second experiment a social class difference was found in the use of adjectives, even when verbal intelligence was controlled for statistically. A significant difference found in the use of nouns in the second experiment was found to be due to intelligence differences between the two social class groups, and the frequency of the use of nouns, pronouns, and adverbs was found to be correlated with verbal IQ. The lack of correlation of speech variables with verbal IQ in the first experiment was attributed to the narrowness of the IQ range, which resulted from the experimental matching of intelligence. It is suggested that differences in verbal intelligence do affect the speech that children use, and care should be taken not to confuse this variable with that of social class when studying the speech of young chldren.