Original Name of the Scale: MacArthur-Bates CDI (Communicative Development

Inventories) - 2003
Editorial Manual Moderno (Mexico) – MacArthur-Bates Inventories of
Development of Communication Skills - 2005
Adaptations to other languages are not mere translations, but versions that take into account
count the linguistic and cultural differences. Many of these adaptations have been
normalized with samples of children from the cultural and linguistic group in question
from the addition of words and verb tenses to the complete modification of inventory II
to reflect specific properties of the Spanish language).
Background: Communicative Development Questionnaire, Language and Gesture
Inventory, Early Language Inventory, Grammatical Development Questionnaire.
Scale Material: Inventory I: First Words and Gestures / Inventory II: Words and
Statements / User Guide and Technical Manual.
Objective of the Scale: To provide reliable information regarding the course of development
linguistic (first signs of comprehension, first non-verbal gestural signals,
expansion of initial vocabulary, beginnings of grammar.
Age to be administered: Parents or mentors complete the scale.
Inventory I: First Words and Gestures: children aged 8 to 18 months.
Inventory II: Words and Sentences: children aged 16 to 30 months.
How does the author define the variable to be measured?

Test structure:

Early comprehension: 3 questions to determine if the child responds to language.

any way.
Understanding of initial phrases: father selects from among 28 phrases those that his son understands.

Ways of speaking: frequency with which the child imitates words or phrases, regularity with the
that identifies objects.
Vocabulary list: from a list of 428 items the father indicates which words the child
understand and which understands and says.

Gestures and actions: use of communicative and symbolic gestures of the child. This section offers the
opportunity to assess a range of early communication and representation skills
that do not depend on verbal expression (important role of gestures in evolution
initial communication skills of the child, cornerstone of linguistic development,
serves as a complement to the linguistic reagents of Part 1, they can be special
utility for the evaluation of communicative and symbolic skills in children with little
expressive language and in children who are showing signs of delay or deterioration of
language).

Lista de vocabulario: de una lista de 680 palabras, anotar cuales DICE el niño.
Part 2: It is asked whether the child is starting to combine words. If the parents indicate that he/she is still
No, Parts B and C are omitted.
Examples: best emissions from children.
Sentence complexity: pairs of sentences, choose which of the options best reflects the way of
to express oneself (the second option of the pair is equivalent to 1 point).

Characterization
Type of Foundation: Empirical.
Test Type: Maternal Report (Multiple Choice and Oral Answers).

Administration
Form: Individual.
Time: 20 to 40 minutes.

Evaluation: 20 to 30 minutes.

Execution and Domain: Maximum Execution (according to the program, the teacher's correction says
Typical Execution, since the goal is to gather information about the linguistic development of a
child), Specific Domain.

Typification: Mexican sample, the data collection method was determined based on
at the educational level of the mothers of the children (mothers with some type of schooling,
illiterate mothers or mothers with low educational levels, mothers with children in daycare with whom it was
impossible to establish direct contact. The goal was to obtain a sample with a minimum of
60 children for each of the 26 age groups and a minimum of 30 girls and 30 boys per group.
age group, coming from a variety of socioeconomic levels. A was conducted.
valuation of the members of the normative samples for inventories I and II in relation
to maternal education. Birth order and contact with a second language.
Standards or Guidelines: The new formats, the Skills Development Inventory
Communicative Inventories I and II (Words and Gestures and Words and Statements) were applied to a
a sample of more than 2000 children. The data from this sample forms the basis for
the rules of this manual.

Unidad de Medida: Percentiles.

Reliability: Test-retest reliability was evaluated to compare the filled inventories.

for 16 mothers with an interval of one month. These data also provided evidence of
reliability (0.62) for the production of similar words obtained with the CDI in English.
Consistencia Interna: coeficiente alfa de Cronbach (correlación por división por mitades entre
all possible distributions of the reagents. High internal consistency, alpha values of
0.88 to 0.98.
Test-retest reliability: pilot test, 1 month difference. The correlation indicated values of
0.53 to 0.97.

Validity: Language sampling data was collected from 17 participants for evaluation.
the validity of these instruments. The results indicated a strong correlation (0.84) between
Production of words from inventory II and the number of different words produced in a
Language Sample.
Apparent validity: (if it seems to measure the domain it is addressing) great importance for obtaining
and maintain a concerted effort on the part of the father when filling out the inventory. The appearance
The professional encourages taking the form seriously.
Content validity: both forms contain a sample of the main characteristics
del desarrollo comunicativo a lo lardo del rango de edades de los 8 a los 30 meses. Los
reactives within each subscale were taken from studies of Spanish-language journals, databases of
data from doctoral theses, comments made by parents, etc. Inventory I covers the
main domains of early communication based on research regarding
development (language comprehension, vocabulary production, use of gestures) Inventory II
se enfoca en la producción de vocabulario y formas gramaticales.
Convergent validity: the close parallelism between the data obtained with the inventories and the
development patterns reported in the specialized literature constitute evidence
extremely important for convergent validity. It is concluded that the
functions of development obtained with inventories correspond to the reports that
they appear in the specialized bibliography, because parents and psycholinguists are
listening and communicating the same developmental phenomena.
Concurrent validity: relationship between maternal reports and children's performance in
Laboratory associated measures. Inventory I: difficult documentation due to the fact that there are few
behavioral measures of language and gestures that are reliable and valid for children in this
rango de edades. Aun así se da cuenta de correlaciones moderadamente elevadas. Inventario
II: laboratory measures (present objects expecting them to be identified) of production of
words in 39 healthy children of normal development, reporting a correlation
moderately high. With bilingual populations: spontaneous language sample, in the
houses and in the laboratory.

Predictive Validity: broad correlation in favor of the predictive power of the instruments of
maternal report during the first 3 years of life. High correlations for the
estimates of productive vocabulary at 20 and 28 months of age, and for inventories
applied with a month apart.

Interpretative Considerations:

Use of norms: despite the statistically reliable differences between boys and girls in
monthly intervals, the fitted curves are consistently higher for girls
in most of the measurements for the two inventories. The percentiles must be estimated.
entonces tanto en edad como en género.
If the score exactly matches the percentile, assign the equivalent score.
of the percentile needs. If the score is between two numbers, you can proceed
assigning it the lowest percentile, or using the more accurate method, calculate how many words it has.
would correspond to the two percentiles between which the subject falls (e.g. Subject obtains 38
words, 15th percentile = 34 words, 20th percentile = 44 words), subtract these scores (10
words), divide by 5 (reflects the change of unit to percentile, therefore 10/5 = 2
words), adding up from the lowest percentile this score until finding the precise one
(Percentile 15 = 34 points, percentile 16 = 36 points, percentile 17 = 38 points). If the score corresponds to
of two percentiles, the highest percentile is awarded directly.
The information about the interpretation of the evaluation of the children in inventory II that
we can obtain is based on descriptive statistics/trends in development (tables
and figures) and in the percentile tables:
Lista de vocabulario: Cuadros 4.17 4.18, Figuras 4.10 4.11,Tablas 5.19 a 5.21
How language is used and understood: Figures 4.19 4.20, Figures 4.12 4.13

Forms of verbs: Tables 4.21 4.22, Figures 4.14

Word combination: Frame 4.23, Figure 4.15
Examples: Table 4.24, Figures 4.16 4.17, Tables 5.22 to 5.24 (if marked still not, 1 is given
point to P3L-Words).
Complexity of sentences: Figures 4.25 4.26, Figures 4.18 4.19, Tables 5.25 to 5.27

Administration and Scoring Conditions:

The manual and user guide detail the following points:
Information about the authors (and acknowledgments).
+General perspective, organization of the guide and the manual, assessment methods of
early language skills in Spanish-speaking children (structured tests)
language samples, maternal reports), scope and description of the inventories
(Inventory I: first words and gestures and from inventory II: Words and statements).
+Application, qualification and interpretation (general instructions, other considerations for
the application, inventory grading, automation of the grading process,
selection of a grading option, use of the rules, interpretation of the score of
child, interpretation of the 2 inventories, use of standards with children: from families
of low socioeconomic status, bilinguals, older people.

+Clinical and research applications (detection of language delay, assessment

of older children with language delays, formulation of intervention strategies,
assessment of the effects of the intervention, detection and preselection of children to different
levels of language development, detection and preselection of children with characteristics
específicas de lenguaje o de niños con perfiles inusuales, concordancias entre niños en cuanto
language skills, analysis of the influence of other variables on development of
language).
Technical information (phases of inventory development, origins of instruments,
initial development of inventories, normative study, data collection, procedure of
muestreo, criterios de exclusión médica, distribución demográfica de la muestra, tendencias
of the development in the evolution of communication, statistical methods, and components of the
2 inventories).
Reliability and validity of inventories.
Percentile tables and figures for inventories
+Appendices (instructions and additional examples, grading examples for the inventory
I, the II and for P3L-Words, description of sentence complexity).
Extra information:
Refer to the parents' report (as an alternative method to laboratory measurements and
clinics) to account for the evolution of the language of their children, the knowledge of the
Parents can help clinicians and researchers determine developmental levels.
of the language of children and this makes it possible to conduct evaluations with greater validity
ecological. Being useful in the detection and prediction of children with language delay.
they should not be the sole measure for the identification of children with disorders, additional assessments are needed
various measurements). The maternal report is useful for determining language skills in
contrast with non-linguistic skills or to compare groups of children.
3 Methods for Assessing Early Language Skills:
Structured tests: obtaining responses from the child in a formal manner, in order to evaluate their
knowledge of vocabulary and grammar. They require time, trained personnel and
child cooperation. They are expensive, moderate validity is obtained with children under 3
years, inherent problems when it comes to children from diverse cultures.
Language samples: it is obtained in a naturalistic playful context with the child and a
father/researcher/therapist. The father is asked to play with the child as they would in
their homes. One should follow the child's lead, making conversational responses to the
expressions of the same and ask open questions. The transcription, in turn, requires
a lot of training, which makes it expensive and does not allow applying to many subjects, being
analyzing a dyad, depends a lot on the relationship with the child and who leads it
interview.
Maternal reports: previously used the 'diaries' for tracking child development. It is
a more representative tool, there may be less influence from factors of
performance (they demonstrate what the child knows, the other two demonstrate what the child prefers
to use), it is profitable for a quick assessment, it can be applied before or after seeing the child,
It is of special ecological value and monitors changes over time. It may be that the
parents are biased observers (underestimate or overvalue).
The inventories have been adapted to more than 20 languages, confirming the usefulness of the report.
maternal as a tool for language assessment in young children. They are of great
usefulness across all of Latin America. They were regulated with Mexican inhabitants but there is
instructions for application in other areas, if appropriate modifications are made.
They can achieve various objectives, both in the research of linguistic evaluation and in
the case of the clinical evaluation. It consists of a computerized grading program. It
care must be taken when applying to children with little or no representation in the sample
regulation (e.g. children coming from families with low income and education levels).
Appendix D: provides reproductions of various sections of the Inventory II filled out with
fictitious information. These example portions are intended to illustrate the
procedures used to classify inventory II. It also provides instructions
necessary for the calculation of P3L-Words based on emissions given by parents.