Many factors affect the rate of language acquisition in children, including genetic factors, cognitive abilities, and the environment, including language stimulation, parent-child interactions, and access to books (Bates, Dale, & Thal, 1995; Hackman, Farah, & Meaney, 2010; Hart & Risley, 1995). A rich body of literature has documented reduced language abilities in children from lower socioeconomic status (SES) environments compared to their higher SES peers. Despite an extensive literature on the development of language from a behavioral perspective, our understanding of the development of neural processes underlying language are not well understood. The current study evaluates the development of neural processes underlying language in children from lower SES backgrounds. Twenty-five preschoolers from lower SES backgrounds participated in this study. Behavioral performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) were used to evaluate changes in language skills and neural processes for language over a one year time period, from age four to age five. The children watched a claymation cartoon of Pingu the penguin. The cartoons contained semantic and syntactic canonical and violation sentences. For semantic conditions, results revealed a significant increase in N400 mean amplitudes from age four to age five. These findings suggest that neural processes for semantic violations are still developing in young children from lower SES backgounds. For standard English and Jabberwocky conditions, in which sentences contained correct English grammar but reduced semantic context, syntactic violations elicited N400 responses at age four with a trend toward smaller N400 amplitudes and a shift toward a positive response at age five. These results suggest that the children are not yet engaging typical neural systems for syntax even by age five. Comparison with previous findings suggest that these neural patterns in young children from lower SES households are delayed compared to the neural processes underlying language in peers from higher SES households. Together, the findings have implications for the importance of early education in supporting language development in young children from lower SES backgrounds.
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