# Betty Hart

betty hart (born Bettie Mackenzie Farnsworth, July 15 1927 – September 28 2012) was an American education researcher, known for her work on the relation between vocabulary learning and social inequality, in particular the "word gap". She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, went on to do graduate work in psychology at Washington University, and later received her PhD from Kansas University where she also became a professor at the Lifespan Institute.In 1995 she and her former graduate adviser Todd Risley published the book Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, based on a longitudinal study of parent-child interactions in 42 families of varying socio-economic class. They argued that educational outcomes were significantly affected by parenting practices, particularly the daily time parents spend talking to their children in early childhood.