The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory: Normative Data for American Sign Language

Area of Science:

• Developmental Psychology
• Linguistics
• Deaf Education

Background:

• Understanding early language acquisition in deaf children is crucial for timely intervention.
• Existing tools for assessing early language development often do not encompass sign language.
• The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are widely used for spoken language assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for American Sign Language (ASL-CDI).
• To measure early sign production in deaf children aged 8 to 36 months.
• To establish normative data for early ASL acquisition.

Main Methods:

• Development of the ASL-CDI, a parent-report inventory of sign glosses organized by semantic categories.
• Utilized a recognition format where parents mark signs produced by their child.
• Collected normative data from 69 deaf children with deaf parents acquiring ASL as their first language.

Main Results:

• The ASL-CDI demonstrated excellent reliability and validity.
• Preliminary cross-sectional and longitudinal data show developmental patterns in sign acquisition.
• Observed parallels between ASL acquisition and spoken language development, including vocabulary size, negation, and question formation.

Conclusions:

• The ASL-CDI is a reliable and valid tool for assessing early ASL development in deaf children.
• Findings support the notion that the fundamental processes of language acquisition are similar across modalities (signed and spoken).
• The study provides valuable developmental data on early ASL acquisition, including specific linguistic milestones.