Production and Maternal Report of 16- and 18-Month-Olds' Vocabulary in Low- and Middle-Income Families

Publication Date

2011

Document Type

Article

Issue

1

Abstract

Children's vocabularies on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories Words and Gestures form (CDI:WG; Fenson et al., 1993) with spontaneous production data in both low- and middle-income families. Method: As part of a longitudinal investigation, language samples were gathered from 23 mother-child dyads based on Stoel-Gammon's (1987) protocol for the Language Production Scale when the children were 16 and 18 months of age. The mothers also completed the CDI:WG at both visits. The words that the children produced were compared with those the mothers reported on the vocabulary checklist, with family income and vocabulary size as grouping factors. Results: Maternal reporting did not differ as a function of socioeconomic status but did increase from 16 to 18 months. Conclusions: The vocabulary differences observed on the CDI:WG for children from lowincome families do not appear to be a reflection of inaccurate maternal reporting. Further research is needed to determine whether these findings will generalize more broadly. © American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Keywords

Socioeconomic status, Toddlers, Vocabulary

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