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. 2021 Jul 22:12:677575.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.677575. eCollection 2021.

Parental Reports of Preschoolers' Lexical and Syntactic Development: Validation of the CDI-III for European Portuguese

Irene Cadime  1 , Ana Lúcia Santos  2 , Iolanda Ribeiro  1 , Fernanda Leopoldina Viana  3
Affiliations

Parental Reports of Preschoolers' Lexical and Syntactic Development: Validation of the CDI-III for European Portuguese

Irene Cadime et al. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

This study presents the validation analysis of the European Portuguese version of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory III (CDI-III-PT). The CDI-III-PT is a parental report measure allowing researchers to assess expressive vocabulary and the syntactic abilities of children aged 2;6-4;0. In this study, we present a version comprising a lexical subscale which follows the Swedish adaptation and an original syntactic subscale allowing us to include language-specific structures. The reports of 739 children were collected; in addition, a standardized measure of language was also administered to a sub-sample of these children and the reports of preschool teachers were collected for another sub-sample. The results indicate a high internal consistency of the lexical and syntactic subscales. As for sociodemographic variables often found to be predictors of language development, as measured by this type of instrument, the results indicate that age and maternal education are significant predictors of the scores, and that first-born children attain higher scores in vocabulary than later born children, but no significant gender differences were found. The scores of the CDI-III-PT are positively correlated with the ones obtained in the standardized language measure, thus supporting their validity. A high agreement between the reports of parents and teachers was also found. These findings indicate that the CDI-III-PT has adequate psychometric properties and that it can be a useful tool for research and clinical practice. The age-based norms that are now provided can be used to evaluate whether a child is performing poorly compared to their peers.

Keywords: European Portuguese; MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory; syntax; validation; vocabulary.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Vocabulary scores for percentiles 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th across the age groups. Fitted by a linear model. N = 739.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Syntax scores for percentiles 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th across the age groups. Fitted by a linear model. N = 739.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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