Use of the short form of the communicative development inventory with African American infants and families

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USE OF THE SHORT FORM OF THE COMMUNICATIVE’DEVELOPMENT INVENTORY WITH AFRICAN AMERICAN INFANTS AND FAMILIES

Joanne E. Roberts, Margaret Burchinal, and Susan Zeisel Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8 180 This study compared scores in vocabulary and grammar on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory to measures on standardized language tests for Afkan American infants and toddlers. Study subjects were 87 African American children, 69% of whom were from low-income families. Children’s vocabulary and grammatical shills were assessed at 18,24, and 30 months of age using the short form of the MacArthur Communicative Inventory (CDI), a standardized parent report tool for assessment of communication shills. The number of vocabulary words and irregular nouns and verbs that mothers heard their children use were computed. From the three longest utterances that mothers recalled their children using, the maximum sentence length in words was calculated. Children were administered two standardized language tests: the Sequenced Inventory of Communication Development-Revised (SICD) at 1,2, and 3 years (which computes a receptive and expressive communication age) and the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales at 18 and 24 months (which measures communicative, social, and symbolic abilities and a total score is computed). Mean scores for vocabulary, irregular nouns and verbs, and average maximum sentence length in words are shown in Table 1 at 18, 24 and 30 months for the study children. Children scored at the mean percentile level for the norms presented in the CD1 at 18 and 24 months for vocabulary and irregular nouns and verbs, however, scored considerably below the mean at 30 months for both of these measures. We found a surprisingly high percentage of children received percentile scores at or below the 10 percentile both on vocabulary and on irregular nouns and verbs at 30 months. We could not compare sentence length in words to the MacArthur norms, because many of the parents used Atkican American Vernacular English and the CD1 does not include norms for sentence length in words, only sentence length in morphemes. Moderate correlations were found between all three CD1 measures and the all of the scores on the standardized language measures. Results suggest that the lexical and grammatical development by 30 months of age of the Atkan American children in this study was not consistent with the norms on the CDI. This maybe due to social class differences which emerge often between 24 and 30 months of age. Thus, these results would suggest very careful interpretation of the data collected using the short form of the CD1 with a population of primarily low-income African American toddlers. Table 1. Paw Scores and Percentile Scores using MacArthur Norms for Lanauaae Measures Vocabulary Words Irregular Nouns and Verbs Average Maximum (maximum 50) (maximum 25 nouns/ verbs) Sentence Length in Words” Age

M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) M (SD) Raw Scores Percentiles Raw Scores Percentiles 18 9.4 (8.5) 53.1 (30.7) 2.3 (3.1) 67.7 (21.1) 24 21.6 (12.5) 45.4 (27.3) 6.3 (5.3) 54.8 (24.2) 30 29.3 (12.8) 26.8 (30.8) 9.5 (6.0) 30.8 (23.6) ’ Normative data in MacArthur not provided for sentence length in words only

M ISD) Raw scores 2.0 (1.0) 3.9 (1.4) 5.2 (1.8) for sentence length in morphemes