Maternal education and measures of early speech and language

The present study was designed to determine whether 4 measures of children' s spontaneous speech and language differed according to the educational lev el of the children's mothers. Spontaneous language samples From 240 three-y ear-old children were analyzed to determine mean length of utterance in mor phemes (MLUm), number of different words (NDW), total number of words (TNW) , and percentage of consonants correct (PCC). A norm-referenced, knowledge- dependent measure of language comprehension, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R), was also included for purposes of comparison with t he spontaneous measures. Three levels of:maternal education were compared: less than high school graduate, high school graduate, and college graduate. Trend analyses showed statistically significant linear trends across educa tional levels for MLUm, NDW, TNW, and PPVT-R; the trend for PCC was not sig nificant. The relationship of maternal education and other sociodemographic variables to measures of children's language should be examined before usi ng such measures to identify children with language disorders.