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Discrepancy between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabulary and infants' behaviour in a preferential looking task*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2007

CARMEL HOUSTON-PRICE ,
EMILY MATHER  and
ELENA SAKKALOU
CARMEL HOUSTON-PRICE*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, UK
EMILY MATHER
Affiliation:
School of Psychology & Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, UK
ELENA SAKKALOU
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Cardiff University, UK
*
Address for correspondence: Dr Carmel Houston-Price, School of Psychology, University of Reading, Earley Gate, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AL, UK. Email: [email protected]. Tel: 0118 378 5378. Fax: 0118 9316715.
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Abstract

Two experiments are described which explore the relationship between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabularies at 1 ; 6 (Experiment 1a) or 1 ; 3, 1 ; 6 and 1 ; 9 (Experiment 1b) and the comprehension infants demonstrated in a preferential looking task. The instrument used was the Oxford CDI, a British English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Words & Gestures). Infants were shown pairs of images of familiar objects, either both name-known or both name-unknown according to their parent's responses on the CDI. At all ages, and on both name-known and name-unknown trials, preference for the target image increased significantly from baseline when infants heard the target's label. This discrepancy suggests that parental report underestimates infants' word knowledge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Child Language , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , November 2007 , pp. 701 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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