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Updated: Nov 17, 2025

Measuring Statistical Learning Across Modalities and Domains in School-Aged Children Via an Online Platform and Neuroimaging Techniques
Published on: June 30, 2020
The intergenerational transmission of language skill
Alice Sullivan1, Vanessa Moulton1, Emla Fitzsimons1
1Department of Social Science, Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS), UCL Institute of Education, London, UK.
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between parents' and children's language skills for a nationally representative birth cohort born in the United Kingdom-the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS). We investigate both socioeconomic and ethnic differentials in children's vocabulary scores and the role of differences in parents' vocabulary scores in accounting for these. We find large vocabulary gaps between highly educated and less educated parents, and between ethnic groups. Nevertheless, socioeconomic and ethnic gaps in vocabulary scores are far wider among the parents than among their children. Parental vocabulary is a powerful mediator of inequalities in offspring's vocabulary scores at age 14, and also a powerful driver of change in language skills between the ages of five and 14. Once we account for parental vocabulary, no ethnic minority group of young people has a negative "vocabulary gap" compared to whites.
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