Macarthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories: Users Guide and Technical Manual - Softcover

Dr. Marchman earned her doctoral degree in Developmental Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego. She served on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Texas at Dallas and was named Distinguished Scholar at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders. She is currently a research scientist in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University and the Department of Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Marchman has conducted research in several areas of language and cognitive development, language disorders, and early childhood development. Her most recent work focuses on individual differences in language-processing efficiency and vocabulary development in monolingual English and bilingual (Spanish/English) children born full term and preterm. Dr. Marchman is a member of the MacArthur-Bates CDI Advisory Board, the developer of the CDI Scoring Program, and a contributor to Web-CDI, the CDI-CAT, and Wordbank.

Donna J. Thal, Ph.D., holds a master of science degree in speech pathology and audiology from Brooklyn College and a doctorate in speech and hearing sciences from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research in Language at UCSD, an assistant professor at Hofstra University, and an assistant professor at Queens College of CUNY. Dr. Thal is a developmental psycholinguist and a certified and licensed speech-language pathologist who has conducted research in a number of areas, including normal and disordered development of language and cognition, children with focal brain injury, and children with delayed onset of language. She has also carried out studies of language development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Her most recent work focuses on early identification of risk for clinically significant language impairment and is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders (NIDCD), within the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Thal is an editorial consultant for language for the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She was the California State nominee for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation Outstanding Clinical Achievement Award in 1996, received the Monty Distinguished Faculty Award from SDSU 1998 and the Albert W. Johnson Research Lecturer Award from SDSU in 1999, and was the Wang Family Excellence Award nominee from SDSU in 2000. She served a 4-year term on the Communicative Disorders Review Committee for the NIDCD from 1998 to 2002. Dr. Thal is a co-author of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories.

Philip S. Dale, Ph.D., is Professor in Departments of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech and Hearing Sciences at University of Washington. Dr. Dale's research interests include assessment of young children's language, language development in exceptional populations including linguistically precocious children, early language and cognition, and the effects of various models of intervention for young children with disabilities.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories User's Guide and Technical Manual SECOND EDITION, by Larry Fenson, Ph.D. Donna J. Thal, Ph.D. Virginia A. Marchman, Ph.D. Philip S. Dale, Ph.D., & Elizabeth Bates, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2007 by The CDI Advisory Board. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

OVERVIEW

Parents notice the emergence of language. A child's first words are eagerly awaited, often dutifully recorded in baby books and diaries, and always shared with family and friends. Subsequent progress is noted and enjoyed until the child's language is so far along that it is finally taken for granted. Popular books for parents abound with advice for fostering early communication and guidelines suggesting when language milestones should be reached, but there is no question that early language is salient for parents, and they need no impetus to notice this remarkable aspect of early development. From this perspective, it is surprising that only since the 1980s have parents come to be viewed as a reliable source of information about the young child's communicative skills. The obvious obstacle was to find a technique that allows researchers and clinicians to harvest the parent's rich view of the child's language.

The first systematic attempts to use questionnaires to tap parents' knowledge about their children's language skills were reported by Bates and her colleagues in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Bates, Camaioni, &Volterra, 1975). These questionnaires evolved into a set of inventories with detailed questions about vocabulary and grammar. At around the same time, Rescorla (1989) developed a 310–item parent–report checklist of productive vocabulary that was designed as a screening tool for detecting language delay in 2–year–old children. The Mac– Arthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) build on the foundations laid by each of these earlier initiatives (see section ?Origins of the Instruments? in Chapter 4). The first two CDIs (sometimes called Inventories in this manual) were published in 1992. These were the CDI: Words and Gestures and the CDI: Words and Sentences. Since that time, the CDIs have been expanded to include one–page brief versions of CDI: Words and Gestures and CDI: Words and Sentences (Fenson, Pethick, et al., 2000). The MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory—III (CDI–III; described in detail in Chapter 6) was also designed to be used with children from 30 to 37 months of age.

Members of the CDI team have also developed Mexican Spanish versions of CDI: Words and Gestures and CDI: Words and Sentences, as well as brief versions of each of these instruments. The Spanish CDIs and an accompanying manual were published in 2003 (Jackson–Maldonado et al.). In addition, the CDI Advisory Board has authorized and encouraged the adaptation of the CDI forms into a number of other languages. These adaptations are not direct translations to other languages but, rather, assessment tools that take linguistic and cultural differences into account (see Dale, Fenson, &Thal, 1993, &http://www .sci.sdsu.edu/cdi/suggestions_adaptations.htm). A number of these instruments are now available for public use, many with supporting normative data (see the CDI web site, http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/cdi/adaptations.htm, for a complete list of non–English versions of the CDIs). Finally, the CDIs will soon be available in an adaptive–testing format, which uses a computer–based administration of a dynamically selected subset of CDI questions to converge on relevant language parameters quickly and efficiently.

There are two distinct advantages to the strategy of using parents as informants regarding the child's language. First, because the CDIs tap knowledge that most parents and caregivers have about their young children's communicative development, the CDIs lead to a more ecologically valid assessment (Crais, 1995) than commonly used laboratory and clinical measures. Second, the CDI strategy is responsive to Part H of the Education of the Handicapped Act Amendments of 1986 (PL 99–457), Part C of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) Amendments of 1997 (PL 105–17), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 (PL 108–446)—all of which require parent input in child evaluation procedures. Because of these advantages, the CDIs have found wide application among researchers and clinicians.

The clinical utility of the CDIs is particularly noteworthy. Clinicians have found that the CDIs are useful in screening and developing a prognosis for children with language delays (Crais, 1995; Heilmann, Weismer, Evans, &Hollar, 2005; Miller, Sedey, &Miolo, 1995; Thal, Reilly, Seibert, Jeffries, &Fenson, 2004; Yoder, Warren, &McCathren, 1998). Researchers have used the CDIs extensively with a wide variety of populations, including children with language delay, children with Down syndrome and Williams syndrome, bilingual children, children in child care, children from different socioeconomic status (SES) groups, babies who were born preterm or with focal lesions, and so forth (see Chapter 3 for a review of the diverse applications of the CDIs).

This new edition of the manual expands the information presented in the first edition (Fenson et al., 1992/1993) in a number of significant ways:

1. We present an expanded set of normative data that is more demographically balanced than the original norms. The expanded norms also extend the upper age of the CDI: Words and Gestures form to 18 months (formerly 16 months).

2. We provide an overview of the brief versions of the CDIs that parallel the CDI: Words and Gestures form and the CDI: Words and Sentences form.

3. We present detailed information and normative values for the CDI–III, a brief adaptation that is applicable to children 30—37 months of age.

4. More detail is presented on the administration of the Inventories.

5. More detailed directions are provided in the text and appendices on how to tabulate scores for the various sections of the Inventories. Guidelines for scoring the three longest utterances and deriving a mean score (in terms of the mean length of the three longest sentences [M3L]) are greatly expanded, and directions for avoiding common scoring errors are provided.

6. Specific guidelines are provided for using the normative tables for the CDI: Words and Gestures form and the CDI: Words and Sentences form.

7. The section on machine scanning is greatly expanded, and a section is provided on the new option of using desktop scanners.

8. A new CDI automated scoring program is introduced.

9. A new section presents recent data on SES variations in CDI performance and addresses the issue of how scores for various subpopulations should be interpreted.

10. The section on research and clinical applications is updated to reflect new findings.

11. The sections on reliability and validity are greatly expanded, incorporating new data.

One additional change in the CDIs calls for special notice. In December 2003, our beloved colleague Elizabeth Bates died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. The role that Liz played in the development of the CDIs was vital. The instrument itself was created within Liz's vision of a productive science of child language development, its early stages of development benefited greatly from Liz's nurturance and encouragement, and the continued evolution and impact of the CDIs reflect Liz's influence in every aspect. The CDI team has renamed the Inventories the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventories to reflect Liz's many contributions.

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