The validity of a parent report instrument of child language at twenty months

Abstract

When carefully assessed and analysed, parent report can provide a valuable overall evaluation of children's language at 20 months. Norming information and validity coefficients are presented here for a vocabulary checklist assessment included in the Early Language Inventory. Normative data are provided for fullterm, preterm, and precocious samples, including selected vocabulatory subsets that are indicative of early language learning style. The vocabulary checklist has substantial validity as indexed by correlations with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development and particularly with a language subscale derived from that test.

On the Inseparability of Grammar and the Lexicon: Evidence from Acquisition, Aphasia and Real-time Processing

“…These three different modes of assessing early grammar were all highly correlated in the Fenson et al study. More importantly still, the three measures correlate very highly with traditional laboratory measures of grammatical complexity (Dale, 1991;Dale et al, 1989), including correlations with MLU up to the statistical ceiling (i.e., as high as MLU correlates with itself in reliability studies). It is thus fair to conclude that these measures constitute a valid and reliable estimate of individual differences in grammatical development across the period from 16-30 months of age.…”

“…After all that work we were surprised to find that, at least in this period of development, MLU is so highly correlated with other, more sophisticated measures, that there was no point in using any other estimate of grammar in correlational analyses with other variables; for a discussion of this point, see . 1994; Dale, 1991;Dale, Bates, Reznick, & Morisset, 1989;Fenson et al, 1993Fenson et al, , 1994Marchman & Bates, 1994 for review). Because many of the examples we will provide below rely on this instrument, some methodological details are in order.…”

Analogous and Distinctive Patterns of Prelinguistic Communication in Toddlers With and Without Hearing Loss

“…These levels of agreement even surpass the levels reported by Camaioni et al (1991) forhearingparents of hearinginfants. Theseresults indicate that hearing parents of children with hearing loss can provide reliable information on the communicative behaviors of their children at home when they are guided by a structured questionnaire that presents a closed set of optional responses (Dale, Bates, Reznick, & Morisset, 1989). …”

Screening for Developmental Delay in the Setting of an Ambulatory Pediatric Clinic

“…40 Moreover, despite differences in physician's and parents' views of developmental skills, agreement between the two is still high with a congruence ranging from 75 to 90%. [43][44][45] Parent-completed measures have additional advantages. A study showed that almost 70% of mothers were more worried about their child' s behavior or development than medical issues, but only slightly more than a quarter (28%)…”