UNLOCKED from our Patreon page, it's the Meaningful Differences Book Club! Voted on by our patrons in 2020, we discussed "Meaningful Differences" by Hart and Risley. And here it is: 2+ hours all about this classic, and sometimes controversial, book documenting Betty Hart and Todd Risley's longitudinal study exploring the home lives of 42 families to try to determine why some children develop more robust language than others. If you ever wondered where the 30 million word gap comes from, you've found it.

Interested in more Book Clubs? Want to vote on what we read next? Feeling FOMO at getting this a full year late? Wish your 2 CEs for listening to the episode were FREE??? Join us on Patreon to get all of our episodes a week early, access to these bonus episodes, plus other goodies.

This episode is worth 2.0 LEARNING CEUs

Works discussed this episode:

Hart, B., & Risley, T. R. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, Md: Paul H. Brookes.

Sperry, D.E., Sperry, L.L., & Miller, P.J. (2019). Reexamining the verbal environments of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Child Development, 90, 1303-1318. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13072

Golinkoff, R.M., Hoff, E., Rowe, M.L., Tamis-LeMonda, C.S., & Hirsh-Pasek, K. (2019). Language matters: Denying the existence of the 30-million word gap has serious consequences, Child Development, 90, 985-992. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13128

Gilkerson, J., Richards, J.A., Warren, S.F., Montgomery, J.K., Greenwood, C.R., Oller, D>K., Hansen, J.H.L., & Paul, T.D. (2017). Mapping the early language environment using all-day recordings and automated analysis. American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 26, 248-265. doi: 10.1044/2016_AJSLP-15-0169

If you're interested in ordering CEs for listening to this episode, click here to go to the store page. You'll need to enter your name, BCBA #, and the two episode secret code words to complete the purchase. Email us at [email protected] for further assistance.