Concurrent and predictive validity of the Galician CDI

Area of Science:

• Child Language Acquisition
• Psycholinguistics
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) are widely used tools for assessing child language development.
• Validating language assessment tools in diverse linguistic populations is crucial for accurate developmental tracking.
• The Galician version of the CDI (IDHC) needed validation for its use with Galician-speaking children.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the concurrent and predictive validity of the Galician version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (IDHC).
• To assess the reliability of both long and short forms of the IDHC in a longitudinal study.
• To examine the relationship between early IDHC scores and later language and cognitive abilities.

Main Methods:

• Longitudinal study of 42 Galician-speaking children from 1;6 to 4;0 years of age.
• Assessment using the IDHC at 1;6 and 2;0 years, alongside spontaneous speech sampling.
• Standardized cognitive (WPPSI-R) and language (RDLS-III) assessments at 4;0 years.

Main Results:

• The IDHC demonstrated high and significant concurrent and short-term validity.
• Strong correlations were observed between vocabulary at 2;0 years and language scores at 4;0 years.
• Results align with findings from other CDI versions, confirming IDHC's effectiveness.

Conclusions:

• The Galician version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (IDHC) is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing language development in Galician-speaking children.
• The IDHC effectively captures early lexical and grammatical development.
• The study supports the IDHC's utility for longitudinal research and clinical evaluation of child language.