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Early lexical development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Donna Jackson-Maldonado ,
Donna Thal ,
Virginia Marchman ,
Elizabeth Bates  and
Vera Gutierrez-Clellen
Donna Jackson-Maldonado
Affiliation:
Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, Mexico
Donna Thal*
Affiliation:
San Diego State University and University of California, San Diego
Virginia Marchman
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin, Madison
Elizabeth Bates
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
Vera Gutierrez-Clellen
Affiliation:
San Diego State University
*
Address for correspondence: Department of Communicative Disorders, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA 92182, USA.
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Abstract

This paper describes the early lexical development of a group of 328 normal Spanish-speaking children aged 0;8 to 2;7. First the development and structure of a new parent report instrument, Inventario del Desarollo de Habilidades Communcativas is described. Then five studies carried out with the instrument are presented. In the first study vocabulary development of Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers is compared to that of English-speaking infants and toddlers. The English data were gathered using a comparable parental report, the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories. In the second study the general characteristics of Spanish language acquisition, and the effects of various demographic factors on that process, are examined. Study 3 examines the differential effects of three methods of collecting the data (mail-in, personal interview, and clinic waiting room administration). Studies 4 and 5 document the reliability and validity of the instrument. Results show that the trajectories of development are very similar for Spanish-and English-speaking children in this age range, that children from varying social groups develop similarly, and that mail-in and personal interview administration techniques produce comparable results. Inventories administered in a medical clinic waiting room, on the otherhand, produced lower estimates of toddler vocabulary than the other two models.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , October 1993 , pp. 523 - 549
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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Footnotes

[*]

This project was funded by grants from the MacArthur Foundation, UCMEXUS, and the June Burnett Institute. Additional support for the second author during data analysis and manuscript preparation was provided by grant No DC00482 from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. We would like to thank Dora Acosta, Teresa Niño, Silvia Rojas-Drummond, and Susan Nevitt for their help in gathering data and/or obtaining access to parents. We would also like to thank Marjorie Palacios, Karen Muzinek and Elvira Bicaci for their help in transcribing the language samples. Special thanks go to the parents who filled out the Inventarios. It was their time, effort and energy that allowed us to successfully complete this project.

References

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