The Italian Words and Sentences MB-CDI: normative data and concordance between complete and short forms

Lexical skills and gesture use: A comparison between expressive and receptive/expressive late talkers

BACKGROUND

Studies on late talkers (LTs) highlighted their heterogeneity and the relevance of describing different communicative profiles.

AIMS

To examine lexical skills and gesture use in expressive (E-LTs) vs. receptive-expressive (R/E-LTs) LTs through a structured task.

METHODS AND PROCEDURES

Forty-six 30-month-old screened LTs were distinguished into E-LTs (n= 35) and R/E-LTs (n= 11) according to their receptive skills. Lexical skills and gesture use were assessed with a Picture Naming Game by coding answer accuracy (correct, incorrect, no response), modality of expression (spoken, spoken-gestural, gestural), type of gestures (deictic, representational), and spoken-gestural answers' semantic relationship (complementary, equivalent, supplementary).

OUTCOMES AND RESULTS

R/E-LTs showed lower scores than E-LTs for noun and predicate comprehension with fewer correct answers, and production with fewer correct and incorrect answers, and more no responses. R/E-LTs also exhibited lower scores in spoken answers, representational gestures, and equivalent spoken-gestural answers for noun production and in all spoken and gestural answers for predicate production.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

Findings highlighted more impaired receptive and expressive lexical skills and lower gesture use in R/E-LTs compared to E-LTs, underlying the relevance of assessing both lexical and gestural skills through a structured task, besides parental questionnaires and developmental scales, to describe LTs' communicative profiles.

Is Specific Learning Disorder Predicted by Developmental Language Disorder? Evidence from a Follow-Up Study on Italian Children

Specific Learning Disorder (SLD) is a complex disorder with a strong genetic component, characterized by varying manifestations and considerable differences among children. Several studies have highlighted that difficulties in language acquisition and the presence of Developmental Language Disorders (DLDs) are frequently associated with SLD, suggesting a continuity between the two disorders. This study aimed to add evidence on the proximal and distal predictors of SLD, focusing on the eventual continuity for the presence of DLD at 4-5 years, on some linguistic and communicative abilities at 27-30 months, and on biological and environmental factors. Our sample consisted of 528 families, whose children (Italian monolingual) participated in a screening program at the age of 27-30 months. When children were on average 8.05 years old, parents were asked to answer an interview aimed at collecting information about the children's language and learning development. Results showed that the prevalence of children with an SLD (7.01%) was in line with those reported in other similar studies. The diagnosis of SLD was significantly predicted by the previous diagnosis of DLD, by male sex/gender, and by the familial risk of SLD. Children with these characteristics had a 54% probability of presenting an SLD.

Night Sleep and Parental Bedtime Practices in Low-Risk Preterm and Full-Term Late Talkers

Night sleep and parental bedtime practices have rarely been investigated in late talkers. This study aimed to explore: night sleep, parental bedtime practices, and their associations in late talkers as well as individual, socio-demographic, and socio-relational factors affecting them. Parents of 47 30-month-old late talkers, born low-risk preterm (n = 24) or full-term (n = 23), with an expressive vocabulary size ≤10th percentile measured by the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory Words and Sentences, and normal cognitive abilities measured by the Bayley Scales, completed the Infant Sleep Questionnaire, the Parental Interactive Bedtime Behaviour Scale, and the Parenting Stress Index Short Form. Results showed slight settling difficulties, night wakings, and frequent co-sleeping in late talkers. Encouraging autonomy practices were frequently used by parents, rather than active physical comforting ones. Recurrent settling difficulties were reported by parents who often applied encouraging autonomy practices, whereas greater night waking problems and frequent co-sleeping were reported by parents who often left their child crying. Low-risk preterm birth and mother's parenting stress predicted total sleep difficulties and night wakings; first-born, high maternal education level and mother's parenting stress predicted settling difficulties; mother's parenting stress was the only predictor for co-sleeping and leaving to cry. These findings have relevant implications for improving late talkers' night sleep and their parents' bedtime practices.

A short-form version of the Australian English Communicative Development Inventory

Purpose: The Australian English Communicative Development Inventory (OZI) is a 558-item parent report tool for assessing language development at 12-30 months. Here, we introduce the short form (OZI-SF), a 100-item, picture-supported, online instrument with substantially lower time and literacy demands.Method: In tool development (Study 1), 95 items were drawn from the OZI to match its item distribution by age of acquisition and semantic categories. Five items were added from four other semantic categories, plus 12 gestures and six games/routines. Simulations computed OZI-SF scores from existing long-form OZI norm data, and OZI and projected OZI-SF scores were correlated. In an independent norming sample (Study 2), parents (n = 230) completed the OZI-SF for their children aged 12-30 months. Child scores were analysed by age and sex.Result: OZI-SF and OZI scores correlate highly across age and language development levels. Vocabulary scores (receptive, expressive) correlate with age and the median for girls is higher until 24 months. By 24 months, 50% of the sample combine words "often". The median time to OZI-SF completion was 12 minutes.Conclusion: Fitted percentiles permit working guidelines for typical (median) performance and lower cut-offs for children who may be behind on age-based expectations and/or at risk for a communication difficulty. The OZI-SF is a short-form of the OZI that has promise for research and clinical/educational use with Australian families.

Integrating Gestures and Words to Communicate in Full-Term and Low-Risk Preterm Late Talkers

Young children use gestures to practice communicative functions that foster their receptive and expressive linguistic skills. Studies investigating the use of gestures by late talkers are limited. This study aimed to investigate the use of gestures and gesture–word combinations and their associations with word comprehension and word and sentence production in late talkers. A further purpose was to examine whether a set of individual and environmental factors accounted for interindividual differences in late talkers’ gesture and gesture–word production. Sixty-one late talkers, including 35 full-term and 26 low-risk preterm children, participated in the study. Parents filled out the Italian short forms of the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB–CDI), “Gesture and Words” and “Words and Sentences” when their children were 30-months-old, and they were then invited to participate in a book-sharing session with their child. Children’s gestures and words produced during the book-sharing session were transcribed and coded into CHAT of CHILDES and analyzed with CLAN. Types of spontaneous gestures (pointing and representational gestures) and gesture–word combinations (complementary, equivalent, and supplementary) were coded. Measures of word tokens and MLU were also computed. Correlational analyses documented that children’s use of gesture–word combinations, particularly complementary and supplementary forms, in the book-sharing session was positively associated with linguistic skills both observed during the session (word tokens and MLU) and reported by parents (word comprehension, word production, and sentence production at the MB–CDI). Concerning individual factors, male gender was negatively associated with gesture and gesture–word use, as well as with MB–CDI action/gesture production. In contrast, having a low-risk preterm condition and being later-born were positively associated with the use of gestures and pointing gestures, and having a family history of language and/or learning disorders was positively associated with the use of representational gestures. Furthermore, a low-risk preterm status and a higher cognitive score were positively associated with gesture–word combinations, particularly complementary and supplementary types. With regard to environmental factors, older parental age was negatively associated with late talkers’ use of gestures and pointing gestures. Interindividual differences in late talkers’ gesture and gesture–word production were thus related to several intertwined individual and environmental factors. Among late talkers, use of gestures and gesture–word combinations represents a point of strength promoting receptive and expressive language acquisition.

Do Spoken Vocabulary and Gestural Production Distinguish Children with Transient Language Delay from Children Who Will Show Developmental Language Disorder? A Pilot Study

The literature on the role of gestures in children with language delay (LD) is partial and controversial. The present study explores gestural production and modality of expression in children with LD and semantic and temporal relationships between gestures and words in gesture + word combinations. Thirty-three children participated (mean age, 26 months), who were recruited through a screening programme for LD. Cognitive skills, lexical abilities, and the use of spontaneous gestures in a naming task were evaluated when the children were 32 months old. When the children were 78 months old, their parents were interviewed to collect information about an eventual diagnosis of developmental language disorder (DLD). According to these data, the children fell into three groups: children with typical development (n = 13), children with LD who did not show DLD (transient LD; n = 9), and children with LD who showed DLD (n = 11). No significant differences emerged between the three groups for cognitive and lexical skills (comprehension and production), for number of gestures spontaneously produced, and for the sematic relationships between gestures and words. Differences emerged in the modality of expression, where children with transient LD produced more unimodal gestural utterances than typical-development children, and in the temporal relationships between gestures and words, where the children who would show DLD provided more frequent representational gestures before the spoken answer than typical-development children. We suggest a different function for gestures in children with T-LD, who used representational gestures to replace the spoken word they were not yet able to produce, and in children with LD-DLD, who used representational gestures to access spoken words.

Vocabulary production in toddlers from low-income immigrant families: evidence from children exposed to Romanian-Italian and Nigerian English-Italian

The relationship between first and second language in early vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children is still debated in the literature. This study compared the expressive vocabulary of 39 equivalently low-SES two-year-old bilingual children from immigrant families with different heritage languages (Romanian vs. Nigerian English) and the same majority language (Italian). Vocabulary size, vocabulary composition and translation equivalents (TEs) were assessed using the Italian/L1 versions of the CDI. Higher vocabulary in Italian than in the heritage language emerged in both groups. Moreover, Romanian-Italian-speaking children produced higher proportions of TEs than Nigerian English-Italian-speaking children, suggesting that L1-L2 phonological similarity facilitates the acquisition of cross-linguistic synonyms.

Moderating Effects of Early Pointing on Developmental Trajectories of Word Comprehension and Production

The present study investigated the moderating role of early communicative pointing on the developmental trends of word comprehension and production over the second year of life. Seventy-seven infants were involved in an experimental pointing task (T-POINT) in sessions at 9 and 12 months, and the MB-CDI questionnaire was filled in by their parents at 15, 18 and 24 months. Based on the age at which the infants were seen to use pointing, they were classified into three groups: the ‘Early’ pointers, who first pointed during the 9-month session; the ‘Typical’ pointers, who first pointed in the 12-month session; and the ‘Late’ pointers, who never pointed in either of the sessions. Using multilevel modelling, we traced the developmental trajectories and individual differences for the two lexical domains of word comprehension and production according to the three pointing groups. The main results showed that compared to the Typical pointers: (i) the Early pointers were faster for word comprehension development, and were similar for word production; (ii) the Late pointers showed lexical delay before 18 months for word comprehension, and between 18 and 24 months for word production. These data are discussed in light of the different roles of early pointing on receptive compared to expressive vocabulary development.

The Effects of a Parent-Implemented Language Intervention on Late-Talkers' Expressive Skills: The Mediational Role of Parental Speech Contingency and Dialogic Reading Abilities

Several qualitative and quantitative features of parental speech input support children’s language development and may play a critical role in improving such process in late talkers. Parent-implemented interventions targeting late-talkers have been developed to promote children’s language outcomes by enhancing their linguistic environment, i.e., parental speech input. This study investigated the effect of a parent-implemented intervention in increasing late talkers’ expressive skills through modifications in structural and functional features of parental speech input. Forty-six thirty-one-month-old late talkers differing in their birth condition (either low-risk preterm or full-term) participated in the study with a parent; 24 parent-child dyads received a parent-implemented intervention centered on dialogic reading and focused stimulation techniques, whereas the other 22 dyads constituted the control group. At pre- and post-intervention, dyads took part in a parent-child shared book-reading session and both parental and child’s speech measures were collected and examined. Results showed that the intervention positively affected parents’ use of responses and expansions of children’s verbal initiatives, as well as the parental amount of talking over reading, whereas no structural features of parental input resulted modified. Mediation analyses pointed out that the intervention indirectly enhanced late-talkers’ use of verbal types and tokens through changes in parental use of expansions and amount of talking over reading. As birth status was entered as a covariate in the analysis, these findings can be extended to children with different gestational age. We conclude that the parent-implemented intervention was effective in supporting late-talkers’ gains in language development as a cascade result of the improvements in parental contingency and dialogic reading abilities. These promising findings suggest to examine not only children and parental outcomes but also the intervention mechanisms promoting changes in late-talkers’ language development as a clearer view on such process can inform the development of feasible, ecological and effective programs.

Language Profiles and Their Relation to Cognitive and Motor Skills at 30 Months of Age: An Online Investigation of Low-Risk Preterm and Full-Term Children

Purpose Wide interindividual variability characterizes language development in the general and at-risk populations of up to 3 years of age. We adopted a complex approach that considers multiple aspects of lexical and grammatical skills to identify language profiles in low-risk preterm and full-term children. We also investigated biological and environmental predictors and relations between language profiles and cognitive and motor skills. Method We enrolled 200 thirty-month-old Italian-speaking children-consisting of 100 low-risk preterm and 100 comparable full-term children. Parents filled out the Italian version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Infant and Toddler Short Forms (word comprehension, word production, and incomplete and complete sentence production), Parent Report of Children's Abilities-Revised (cognitive score), and Early Motor Questionnaire (fine motor, gross motor, perception-action, and total motor scores) questionnaires. Results A latent profile analysis identified four profiles: poor (21%), with lowest receptive and expressive vocabulary and absent or limited word combination and phonological accuracy; weak (22.5%), with average receptive but limited expressive vocabulary, incomplete sentences, and absent or limited phonological accuracy; average (25%), with average receptive and expressive vocabulary, use of incomplete and complete sentences, and partial phonological accuracy; and advanced (31.5%), with highest expressive vocabulary, complete sentence production, and phonological accuracy. Lower cognitive and motor scores characterized the poor profile, and lower cognitive and perception-action scores characterized the weak profile. Having a nonworking mother and a father with lower education increased the probability of a child's assignment to the poor profile, whereas being small for gestational age at birth increased it for the weak profile. Conclusions These findings suggest a need for a person-centered and cross-domain approach to identifying children with language weaknesses and implementing timely interventions. An online procedure for data collection and data-driven analyses based on multiple lexical and grammatical skills appear to be promising methodological innovations. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14818179.

Adaptación y normativización del Inventario del Desarrollo Comunicativo Mac Arthur Bates (CDI-Forma II) al español rioplatense

En este trabajo se presenta la adaptación al español rioplatense de la Forma II de los Inventarios del Desarrollo Comunicativo Mac Arthur-Bates (CDI), destinado a evaluar el vocabulario expresivo y las habilidades morfosintácticas entre los 16 y los 30 meses. Se expone, en primer lugar, el procedimiento de adaptación del instrumento. En segundo lugar, se presentan algunas evidencias de su fiabilidad y validez, al tiempo que se describen las principales tendencias evolutivas encontradas tras la aplicación del inventario a una muestra de 726 madres y/o padres de niños y niñas de las edades arriba mencionadas. Los resultados indican, en primer lugar, que   la versión rioplatense del CDI presenta elevados niveles de consistencia interna y de representatividad de sus ítems léxicos. En segundo lugar, las trayectorias del desarrollo léxico y gramatical observadas se han mostrado sensibles a los cambios en relación con la edad, de modo comparable al de otras adaptaciones del CDI. Al mismo tiempo, se han encontrado correlaciones moderadas y significativas entre el aumento del vocabulario y la complejidad morfosintáctica, aún después de controlar el efecto de la edad. Por último, se ha observado un efecto significativo del nivel educativo materno sobre el tamaño del léxico expresivo y la longitud media de las primeras frases. Se concluye que la versión rioplatense del CDI representa una contribución necesaria y promisoria para la evaluación del lenguaje temprano en el contexto sudamericano.

Toddlers' Early Communicative Skills as Assessed by the Short Form Version of the Estonian MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory II

Purpose The purpose of the current study is to develop a valid and reliable screening tool to identify children with risk of developing language difficulties for Estonian-speaking 2- to 3-year-old children. Method Nine hundred ninety parents of children ages 1;8-3;1 (years;months) filled in the Estonian MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory II (ECDI-II SF)-containing a 100-word vocabulary checklist, questions about decontextualized language use, and sentence production. A subset of parents filled in the long form of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory: Words and Sentences (n = 131). We examined the results of 31 children with language problems on the ECDI-II SF to assess the accuracy of the instrument. Results The concordance of scores on the ECDI-II long form and ECDI-II SF is high. Toddlers' results on the ECDI-II SF are related to their gender, with girls outscoring boys on the expressive vocabulary and sentence complexity subscales. We also found that children of highly educated mothers outperform others in the acquisition of grammatical skills. The sensitivity and specificity of the ECDI-II SF vocabulary section supported the implementation of this screening tool in order to identify toddlers with difficulties in their language development. Conclusions ECDI-II SF vocabulary scores are the most informative for determining whether a 2- or 3-year-old is following typical developmental patterns or should be referred to a speech and language specialist for a direct assessment. We provide a discussion on early language screening process and its implications for public health policies.

Exploring Agreement between MB-CDI Short Forms for Evaluating the Language Skills of Italian Children Aged 18-24 Months

INTRODUCTION

The short forms of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDI) are widely used for assessing communicative and linguistic development in infants and toddlers. Italian norms for the Words and Gestures (WG) and Words and Sentences (WS) short forms overlap between 18 and 24 months.

OBJECTIVE

To evaluate the agreement between these two forms.

METHODS

Parents of 104 children aged 18-24 months filled in both questionnaires.

RESULTS

The two questionnaires showed high agreement in measuring expressive vocabulary size and the percentile of lexical production and good agreement in identifying children at-risk for language delay (75% of the cases were accurately identified). Both short forms include a list of 100 words and a set of questions investigating potential risk factors for communication and language disorders. Ten children with an expressive vocabulary <10th percentile were compared to 10 with typical language development. Scores for children <10th percentile were significantly lower than their peers, in addition to scores of lexical comprehension, gesture-word, and 2-word combinations, and phonological accuracy, imitation of new words, and decontextualized use of language.

CONCLUSIONS

Short forms of the Italian MB-CDI can be used interchangeably for evaluating lexical production, but each one offers different quantitative and qualitative information on the behaviours related to language acquisition.

Home Language Activities and Expressive Vocabulary of Toddlers from Low-SES Monolingual Families and Bilingual Immigrant Families

Children from low-SES (socioeconomic status) and minority language immigrant families are at risk of vocabulary difficulties due to the less varied and complex language in the home environment. Children are less likely to be involved in home language activities (HLA) in interaction with adults in low-SES than in higher-SES families. However, few studies have investigated the HLA variability among low-SES, minority language bilingual immigrant families. This longitudinal study analyzes the frequency and duration of HLA and their predictive roles for expressive vocabulary acquisition in 70 equivalent low-SES monolingual and bilingual toddlers from minority contexts. HLA and vocabulary were assessed at 24 and 30 months in the majority language (Italian) and in total (majority+minority language) using parent and teacher reports. The frequency and duration of HLA in interaction with adults in total, but not in the majority language, at 24 months were similar for the two groups. These activities uniquely accounted for expressive vocabulary at 30 months, after accounting for total vocabulary at 24 months, in both groups. In conclusion, a minority-majority language context is not an additional risk factor for vocabulary acquisition if HLA is considered in interaction with adults in both languages. HLA are proximal environmental protective factors for vocabulary acquisition.

A Bayesian-Inspired Item Response Theory-Based Framework to Produce Very Short Versions of MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories

Purpose This study introduces a framework to produce very short versions of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) by combining the Bayesian-inspired approach introduced by Mayor and Mani (2019) with an item response theory-based computerized adaptive testing that adapts to the ability of each child, in line with Makransky et al. (2016). Method We evaluated the performance of our approach-dynamically selecting maximally informative words from the CDI and combining parental response with prior vocabulary data-by conducting real-data simulations using four CDI versions having varying sample sizes on Wordbank-the online repository of digitalized CDIs: American English (a very large data set), Danish (a large data set), Beijing Mandarin (a medium-sized data set), and Italian (a small data set). Results Real-data simulations revealed that correlations exceeding .95 with full CDI administrations were reached with as few as 15 test items, with high levels of reliability, even when languages (e.g., Italian) possessed few digitalized administrations on Wordbank. Conclusions The current approach establishes a generic framework that produces very short (less than 20 items) adaptive early vocabulary assessments-hence considerably reducing their administration time. This approach appears to be robust even when CDIs have smaller samples in online repositories, for example, with around 50 samples per month-age.