Discrepancy between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabulary and infants' behaviour in a preferential looking task

Abstract

Two experiments are described which explore the relationship between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabularies at 1 ; 6 (Experiment 1a) or 1 ; 3, 1 ; 6 and 1 ; 9 (Experiment 1b) and the comprehension infants demonstrated in a preferential looking task. The instrument used was the Oxford CDI, a British English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Words & Gestures). Infants were shown pairs of images of familiar objects, either both name-known or both name-unknown according to their parent's responses on the CDI. At all ages, and on both name-known and name-unknown trials, preference for the target image increased significantly from baseline when infants heard the target's label. This discrepancy suggests that parental report underestimates infants' word knowledge.

Rapid word learning in 13- and 17-month-olds in a naturalistic two-word procedure: Looking versus reaching measures

“…Indeed, this supposition is consistent with false negatives in parents' MCDI reports of their infants' comprehension repertoires as compared with subsequent preferential looking measures of these infants' word learning conducted in the laboratory (Houston-Price, Mather, & Sakkalou, 2007).…”

Novel labels support 10-month-olds’ attention to novel objects

“…Parental vocabulary reports support this interpretation, with very low levels of reported comprehension for all six familiar object names. However, a study by Houston-Price, Mather, and Sakkalou (2007) found that British parents appear to underestimate comprehension vocabulary for infants between 15 and 21 months of age. It is currently unknown whether parents underreport vocabulary for younger infants.…”

Toddlers' Language-Mediated Visual Search: They Need not have the Words for It

“…As noted above, parental report may overestimate or underestimate toddler knowledge (e.g., Houston-Price et al, 2007;Tomasello & Mervis, 1994). Nevertheless, in a final analysis we considered the toddlers' performance on the colour related distractor trials in the light of the parental reports of their knowledge and use of colour labels.…”