May 2015 Sharon Murphy Well known developmental psychologists Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff recently wrote a piece for Philly.com recalling a 30-year-old study sometimes referred to as the "30 million word gap study." In this study, researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley found that the number of words spoken to 3-year-olds whose families fell into the low-income bracket was found to be far fewer than the number spoken to children whose families were of

December 2014 Sharon Murphy Longitudinal studies require effort but they have dramatic pay-offs. A new study out of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies at the University of London's Institute of Education is one such study. The study's authors, Sullivan and Brown (see below), managed to answer the question, 'Does reading increase people's vocabularies between the ages of 16 and 42?" (p. 5). They used a sample that had been surveyed since birth and wondered about how childh