Background
Risley, Todd Robert was born on September 8, 1937 in Palmer, Alaska, United States. Son of Robert and Eva Lou (Todd) Risley.
( Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Yo...)
Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children is the story of the landmark research study that uncovered the widely cited "word gap" between children from low-income homes and their more economically advantaged peers. This groundbreaking research has spurred hundreds of studies and programs, including the White House’s Bridging the Word Gap campaign and Too Small to Fail, a joint initiative of the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton foundation. Betty Hart and Todd Risley wanted to know why, despite best efforts in preschool programs to equalize opportunity, children from low-income homes remain well behind their more economically advantaged peers years later in school. Each month, they recorded one full hour of every word spoken at home between parent and child in 42 families, categorized as professional, working class, or welfare families. Two and a half years of coding and analyzing every utterance in 1,318 transcripts followed. By age 3, the recorded spoken vocabularies of the children from the professional families were larger than those of the parents in the welfare families. Between professional and welfare parents, there was a difference of almost 300 words spoken per hour. Extrapolating this verbal interaction to four years, a child in a professional family would accumulate experience with almost 45 million words, while an average child in a welfare family would hear just 13 million—coining the phrase the 30 million word gap. The implications of this painstaking study are staggering: Hart and Risley's follow-up studies at age 9 show that the large differences in children's language experience were tightly linked to large differences in child outcomes. As the authors note in their preface to the 2002 printing of Meaningful Differences, "the most important aspect to evaluate in child care settings for very young children is the amount of talk actually going on, moment by moment, between children and their caregivers." By giving children positive interactions and experiences with adults who take the time to teach vocabulary, oral language concepts, and emergent literacy concepts, children should have a better chance to succeed at school and in the workplace. Learn more about how parent and children's language interactions affect learning to talk in Hart & Risley's companion book The Social World of Children Learning to Talk.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1557661979/?tag=2022091-20
( This fascinating companion to the award-winning Meaning...)
This fascinating companion to the award-winning Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children reveals how daily child-parent social interactions govern children's language and social development. Based on unparalled data from 2-1/2 years of observing the everyday interactions of 1- and 2-year-old children learning to talk in their own homes, Hart and Risley have charted the month-by-month growth of the children's vocabulary, utterances, and use of grammatical structures. The compelling narrative highlights reliability-tested research findings and is supplemented with numerous transcripts from observations and a list of 2,000 words of children's expressive vocabulary from 19-36 months of age. This book is must-reading for professionals in speech and language, child development, psychology, and education who need to understand how children come to talk as much and as well as their parents and caregivers. Learn more about Hart and Risley's unparalleled study which shows the importance of talking often to young children in their companion book, Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/155766420X/?tag=2022091-20
Risley, Todd Robert was born on September 8, 1937 in Palmer, Alaska, United States. Son of Robert and Eva Lou (Todd) Risley.
Bachelor of Arts with distinction in Psychology, San Diego State College, 1960; Master of Sciences, University Washington, 1963; Doctor of Philosophy, University Washington, 1966.
Assistant professor psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 1964-1965;
research associate, Bureau Child Research, U. Kansas, Lawrence, 1965-1977;
senior scientist, Bureau Child Research, U. Kansas, Lawrence, since 1977;
assistant professor department human development, Bureau Child Research, U. Kansas, Lawrence, 1967-1969;
associate professor, Bureau Child Research, U. Kansas, Lawrence, 1969-1973;
professor, Bureau Child Research, U. Kansas, Lawrence, 1973-1984;
professor psychology, U. Alaska, Anchorage, since 1982. President Center for Applied Behavior Analysis, 1970-1982. Director Johnny Cake Child Study Center, Mansfield, Arkansas, 1973-1974.
Visiting professor U. Auckland (New Zealand), 1978. Acting director Western Carolina Center, Morgantown, North Carolina, 1981;director Alaska Division Mental Health and Development Disabilities, 1988-1991. Consultant in field to numerous organizations and institutions.
( Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Yo...)
( This fascinating companion to the award-winning Meaning...)
Co-chairman Florida task force on use of behavioral procedures in state programs for retarded, since 1974. Member resident abuse investigating committee division retardation Florida Department Health and Rehabilitation Services, since 1972. Member advisory committee Social Research Institute, University Utah, since 1977.
Member Alaska Governor's Council on Handicapped and Gifted, 1983-1988, National Institutes of Health Mental Retardation Research Committee, 1987-1988, Alaska Mental Health Board, 1988. Fellow American Psychological Association (council of representatives 1982-1985, president division 25, 1989, Edgar Doll award 2000 ), American Psychological Society. Member American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Association Mental Deficiency (Research award 2000), Association Advancement of Behavior Therapy (director 1975-1980, president 1976-1977, chairman professional review committee since 1977, series editor Readings in Behavior Therapy since 1977), Society Behavioral Medicine, Association Behavior Analysis, Sigma Xi.
1 child, Todd Michael. Married Cheryl Thomas, March 30, 1996.