[oldbrowser]

A heartbreaking social statistic is that children on welfare have only about half as many words per day directed at them as the children of working-class families

With the welfare families I have observed, the children get a constant stream of words directed at them, by the television. I think the quality of the words are just as important as the quantity.

[Tax-chick]

Iirc, the research has observed that speech by a living person is important, rather than broadcast speech. An older child or an adult may learn vocabulary from television or radio, but very young children are not learning from those media in the way they do if a parent (sigh, or “other caregiver”) is speaking.