What is it about?
The CDI is a widely used parental report. We describe the European Portuguese CDI short forms, which are the first published instruments for the assessment of language development in European Portuguese-learning infants and toddlers. WE provide normative data for several aspects of language development, by age and gender. It is now possible to know, through a one-page questionnaire, wether a given child shows a percentile scores that fall within the range of the normative data. Socioeconomic status, and differences across languages in developmental trends were also considered.
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Why is it important?
It is crucial to have instruments to assess early language development that can be used in research, clinical and educational settings. We found significant gender differences for all language skills measured, indicating that separate norms are needed for girls and boys. We also found important differences between languages, showing that norms obtained for one language should not be used to assess development in another language. Importantly, researchers, educators, therapists, clinicians, pediatricians, and other professionals can now use the CDI to measure early language development in the lab, the nursery school, or clinic and hospital.
Perspectives
The CDI short forms are currently being used with at-risk and language-impaired children, as well as bilingual children, in different labs and countries. We feel privileged to have contributed to make these instruments accessible to the large community of all those that are interested in early language development and assessment.
Prof Sonia Frota
Universidade de Lisboa
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Infant communicative development assessed with the European Portuguese MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories short forms, First Language, July 2016, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0142723716648867.
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