The Early Communication Indicator for Infants and Toddlers

Abstract

The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) is a measure relevant to intervention decision making and progress monitoring for infants and toddlers. With increasing recognition of the importance of quality early childhood education and intervention for all children, measurement plays an important role in documenting children’s progress and outcomes of early educational experiences. Screening and progress-monitoring measures used in a response-to-intervention approach require age-based benchmarks for decision-making support. The goal of this study was to create a normative sample of ECI data referenced to children served by Early Head Start, including children with Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs). In a large sample of children ( N = 5,883), program staff in 27 Early Head Start programs in two states collected ECI data from 2002 to 2007. Results indicated that children’s ECI total communication growth was conditional on IFSP status but not on gender or home language (English versus Spanish). Children’s patterns of communication on the ECI key skill elements (i.e., gestures, vocalizations, single words, and multiple words) were also conditional on IFSP status. Children with IFSPs had (a) later ages of onset for vocalizations, single words, and multiple words; (b) generally slower growth over time; and (c) significantly lower mean levels in the most advanced key skill: multiple words at 36 months of age. Implications for early childhood researchers and service providers are discussed.

The Agreement between Parent-Reported and Directly Measured Child Language and Parenting Behaviors

“…A total communication composite score was generated by weighting single words by two and multiple words by three, before summing all four domain scores. Inter-rater agreement on 20% of observations independently coded by both assessors was 93.9%, consistent with previously reported figures (Greenwood et al, 2010). Families from a non-English speaking background were not instructed to speak English.…”

Peers as clinicians: Examining the impact of Stay Play Talk on social communication in young preschoolers with autism

“…SMA takes into account autocorrelation (i.e., non-independence of sequential observations); therefore, the default model (i.e., "lag-1 autoregressive") was selected to prevent increasing type-one error given the small sample size and to provide the most conservative approach with these analyses. Because of the suggested minimum amount of simulations, these analyses were set to run 5,000 simulations [29].…”

Language assessment in a snap: Monitoring progress up to 36 months

“…The feasibility of monthly administration has been demonstrated in a recent yearlong LENA Research Foundation pilot intervention including bi-weekly and monthly parent group meetings, with 74% of participants completing it at 4-week intervals. Note too that successful utilization of frequent monitoring tools in early intervention has also been demonstrated with the Early Communication Indicator (ECI), a brief, professionally LANGUAGE SNAPSHOT 20 administered observational tool completed at monthly and bi-weekly intervals to gauge response to intervention in terms of child communication skills (Greenwood et al, 2010).…”