Consistency and Inconsistency in Caregiver Reporting of Vocabulary

Arunachalam, Sudha; Avtushka, Valeryia; Luyster, Rhiannon; Guthrie, W. Spencer

doi:10.1080/15475441.2021.1931233

Cited by 4 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 34 publications

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“…To obtain a picture of children's language and developmental profiles and to ensure that the two groups did not significantly differ from each other, we asked parents to complete the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory II Short Form A: Words and Sentences for expressive vocabulary (Fenson et al, 2007; three nonspectrum children did not have MCDI scores). This form is designed for typically-developing children ages 16-30 months; however, the publishers note that it "may be used with older, developmentally-delayed children" (CDI Advisory Board, n.d.) and many studies do so (e.g., Hambly and Fombonne, 2012;Robertson et al, 2017;Arunachalam et al, 2022). We also note that neither group was at ceiling (see Table 1).…”

Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 60%

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

Luyster

Arunachalam

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Caregivers’ language input supports children’s language development, and it is often tuned to the child’s current level of skill. Evidence suggests that parental input is tuned to accommodate children’s expressive language levels, but accommodation to receptive language abilities is less understood. In particular, little is known about parental sensitivity to children’s abilities to process language in real time. Compared to nonspectrum children, children on the spectrum are slower to process language. In this study, we ask: Do parents of autistic children and those of nonspectrum children tune their language input to accommodate children’s different language processing abilities? Children with and without a diagnosis of autism (ages 2–6 years, N = 35) and their parents viewed a display of six images, one of which was the target. The parent labeled the target to direct the child’s attention to it. We first examined children’s language processing abilities by assessing their latencies to shift gaze to the labeled referent; from this, we found slower latencies in the autistic group than in the nonspectrum group, in line with previous findings. We then examined features of parents’ language and found that parents in both groups produced similar language, suggesting that parents may not adjust their language input according to children’s speed of language processing. This finding suggests that (1) capturing parental sensitivity to children’s receptive language, and specifically language processing, may enrich our models of individual differences in language input, and (2) future work should investigate if supporting caregivers in tuning their language use according to children’s language processing can improve children’s language outcomes.

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Section: Participantsmentioning

confidence: 60%

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

Luyster

Arunachalam

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Semantic and Syntactic Properties of Words and the Receptive–Expressive Gap in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

Artis

Arunachalam

2023

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: The goal of this work was to examine the semantic and syntactic properties of the vocabularies of autistic and non-autistic infants and toddlers to see if children in these two groups know different kinds of words. We focused on both receptive and expressive vocabularies. For expressive vocabulary, we looked only at the “active” lexicon: Of those words that are already in children's receptive vocabulary, we asked which ones they also produce. Method: We used an existing data set of 346 parent report vocabulary checklists (MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Gestures) from 41 autistic and 27 non-autistic children at multiple timepoints between the ages of 6 and 43 months. We coded the words on the checklists for various semantic and syntactic properties and evaluated which properties predicted whether children understood and produced those words. Results: Overall, we replicated a common finding that autistic children have smaller receptive vocabularies than non-autistic children, but we found that of the words they understand, autistic children produce a similar proportion of those words as non-autistic children. While we found that some syntactic properties are more or less likely to be represented in children's early vocabularies (e.g., nouns are more likely to be understood and produced than words that are not nouns), these patterns did not differ across autistic and non-autistic children. Conclusions: The semantic and syntactic compositions of autistic and non-autistic children's vocabularies are similar. Thus, while receptive vocabularies are relatively smaller for autistic children, they do not appear to have specific difficulty with words that have particular syntactic or semantic properties, or with adding words to the expressive vocabulary that they already understand.

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How to Build a Communicative Development Inventory: Insights From 43 Adaptations

Jarůšková

Šmolík

Chládková

et al. 2023

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: This article reviews 43 adaptations of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs), a tool used for measuring children's communicative and language skills. The aim is to provide an overview of different approaches to develop local versions of the instrument (reflecting linguistic and cultural specifics) and to formulate recommendations and suggestions that expand the current guidelines of the MB-CDI Advisory Board. The article also discusses cross-linguistic differences in the structure of this tool, as well as the availability of sources for the language-specific MB-CDI adaptations. Conclusions: Strategies differ in the construction of the inventory contents and in the norming phase, as well as in documenting reliability and validity. The most frequent strategies in developing the item lists are translations of existing CDIs and pilot administrations; relatively recent strategies include consultations with child development experts. The norming approach varies in, for example, the number of participants and techniques of administrations. When establishing age-related norms, different methods of growth curve construction are used. We recommend methods that consider the complete data set and provide a code example. We suggest that the reliability of the tool should be documented not only as internal consistency but also using test–retest measures, ideally combined with interrater agreement. It is desirable that adaptations establish criterion validity against other measures of language development, such as structured tests, spontaneous language samples, or experimental methods. In summary, by critically reviewing the different adaptation strategies, the present review article provides guidance for teams that adapt the MB-CDI into new languages. Supplemental Material: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.22661689

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Consistency and Inconsistency in Caregiver Reporting of Vocabulary

Cited by 4 publications

References 34 publications

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

Parental tuning of language input to autistic and nonspectrum children

Semantic and Syntactic Properties of Words and the Receptive–Expressive Gap in Autistic and Non-Autistic Children

How to Build a Communicative Development Inventory: Insights From 43 Adaptations

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