Afrikaans: The descriptive statistics indicated variability between scores achieved on the MB-CDI and the object naming/identification task. Internal reliability scores between the object naming/identification task and the entire MB-CDI indicated a high internal consistency for the language domains (α=0.950).
Introduction to the chapter
Background
To achieve this, SLPs must have a deep understanding of the experiences, languages and cultures of the South African population, in addition to assessment tools that are relevant in the South African context and considered linguistically and culturally appropriate (Mdlalo, Flack & Joubert, 2019; Pascoe & Norman, 2011 ). This remains a challenge for SLPs, as there is limited research available on the acquisition of South African languages in young children (Pascoe & Smouse, 2012), so it is also a challenge for SLPs to identify and treat young children who have difficulties in acquiring these languages. languages.
Language acquisition
A recent project by Southwood et al. 2021a) in South Africa led to the development of the MB-CDI in several official languages of the country. The project was divided into two phases, with six languages, namely Afrikaans, isiXhosa, isiZulu, SAE, Sesotho and Xitsonga already having a long form of the MB-CDI (Fenson et al., 1994) ready for validation by was piloted twice.
MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs)
Validity
2016) examined the concurrent validity of the Spanish-English MB-CDI by correlating scores from the MB-CDI with direct assessment of Spanish and English. O'Toole and Fletcher (2010) set out to prove the concurrent validity of the Irish MB-CDI by calculating Pearson correlation coefficients between the Irish.
Validation of the MB-CDIs
In determining the quality of an assessment, the reliability of the assessment is often determined along with its validity. One of the measures of reliability commonly used in assessment research is the calculation of Cronbach's alpha, which can be defined as measuring the reliability of the sum of measurements that may represent test items, and is then referred to as internal consistency (Bonnet). & Wright, 2015).
Chapter conclusion
Ensuring the validity of assessments – or of adaptations of assessments – is an imperative step to advance linguistic knowledge, not only from a pedagogical perspective, but also in clinical practice (Alcock et al., 2015).
Introduction to the chapter
Language acquisition of SAE
This is supported by research that has also found that the lexical and grammatical development of young SAE-speaking monolingual children is ahead of that of bilingual/multilingual children (Potgieter, 2016; Potgieter & Southwood, 2016). In the language development of young SAE-speaking children older than 4;0 years, language comprehension is also predicted to precede language formation (Haman et al., 2017; Potgieter, 2016;.
Language acquisition of Afrikaans
This is supported by Haman et al. 2017), who described the lexical development of Afrikaans-speaking children between the ages of 3;6 and 4;0 and found that lexical comprehension scores exceeded production scores for all participants. Similar to the findings for Afrikaans-speaking children under the age of 4;0, lexical development is often more advanced than grammatical development.
Factors affecting the language acquisition of SAE and Afrikaans
This suggests that maternal education level can have an impact on the language development of young Afrikaans-speaking children above the age of 4;0 (Southwood, 2013). Furthermore, the presence of a primary male caregiver can have an impact on the language abilities of young Afrikaans-speaking children.
Test development
The standard deviation of the object naming/identification task was slightly smaller than the standard deviation for the MB-CDI. Associations between the object naming/identification task and all vocabulary and gesture sections of the MB-CDI.
Validation of the MB-CDIs
Chapter conclusion
Validation of an assessment is important because it will contribute to the linguistic knowledge of the languages and can influence educational and clinical practice. The current study is piloting the validation of the long form of the SAE and African versions of the MB-CDI, and the next chapter provides a description of the methodology used to do so.
Introduction to the chapter
The findings presented in this chapter provided evidence for the concurrent validity of the MB-CDI, which is essential for this study, as research suggests that the strongest evidence for the validity of this assessment is to demonstrate that it has criterion/concurrent validity (O' Toole & Fletcher , 2010). Based on the findings of studies on the reliability and validity of other language versions of the MB-CDI, parents can be considered good informants in terms of their children's language skills, so the long form of the MB-CDI has proven to be a valid parent. report on a measure for use in assessing the language development of young monolingual children.
Problem statement
There are many MB-CDI adaptations and many of the studies have undertaken validation, mostly using direct assessment measures, including standardized assessments (Deckers et al., 2016), newly created assessments (Caselli et al., 2020) and spontaneous language samples ( Pérez-Pereira & Resches, 2011). The present study correlates the results on the MB-CDI with the results of an object naming/identification task obtained at the same time, and thus proposes to calculate the concurrent validity.
Aim
Objectives
Research design
This highlighted the need for South African MB-CDIs to be developed and validated prior to official use. The research design was based on that used for other MB-CDI studies and the literature related to test validation (Marchman & Martinez-Sussman, 2002; Thal, Jackson-Maldonado &. Acosta, 2000).
Objective 1
Sampling method
The second and third objectives involved a quantitative and qualitative description of the data collected from the two evaluations, followed by a descriptive-linguistic analysis and a quantitative approach in comparing the findings from the two evaluations.
Materials
Procedure
This required an iterative process of switching between the data and the literature and ultimately led to the development of a protocol that specified exactly how to devise the naming/identification task (see Appendix J attached separately). The items were then tested with three adult speakers of the first language, for SAE and Afrikaans separately, and changes were made to the items based on the responses of these adult speakers.
Objectives 2 and 3
- Sampling method
- Participants
- Materials
- Data collection
- Participant criteria: Adults
- Participant criteria: Children
- Procedure
- Data management
- Analysis
Adult participants who progressed between 0-70% after completing the MB-CDI were subsequently excluded from the study. During this session, I administered the object naming/identification task to the child participant and considered the effectiveness of the instructions provided in the protocol.
Risks and benefits
Ethical considerations
Privacy refers to the participant's right to have certain information not disclosed to parties other than myself as the researcher (Guraya, London & Guraya, 2014) and was maintained by ensuring that each participant consented to the sharing of any information. Autonomy is the principle of recognizing that each participant has a right to their own decision-making, which must be respected (Jahn, 2011) and was maintained by informing participants of goals and objectives and by obtaining consent to participate.
Chapter conclusion
Cronbach's alpha values for the object naming/identification task and the entire vocabulary and gesture sections of the SAE MB-CDI. Cronbach's alpha values for the object naming/identification task and the full vocabulary and gesture sections of the African MB-CDI.
Introduction to chapter
Results
For example, according to the UK-CDI lexicon for SAE, the word 'ball' is classified as 'light'. According to the UK-CDI Afrikaans lexicon, the Afrikaans word "bal" is also classified as "light".
Discussion
In addition, the protocol is specifically designed to be used as a guideline for creating an object naming/identification task for each of the six South African languages. This is important in this study because of the similarities present in the development of the protocol and the development of the vocabulary checklist.
Chapter conclusion
These statistics were calculated using only the scores of the 25 items included in the object naming/identification task and the same 25 items from the MB-CDI. A comparison of the results from the 25 items of the object naming/identification task and the 25 items of the MB-CDI alone indicated high internal consistency for the language domains.
Introduction to chapter
Results
Objective 2 a
Sign scores were higher than language scores, with the lowest being 2/5 and the highest being 4/5. Gesture scores were found to be greater than or equal to language scores for all participants, with the lowest being 4/5 and the highest being 5/5.
Objective 2 b
Gesture scores were found to be higher than language scores, with the lowest being 1/5 and the highest being 5/5. Significance scores were found to be higher than language scores in the majority of participants, with the lowest being 1/5 and the highest being 5/5.
Data analysis
Descriptive statistics
This indicates that the mean for the object naming/identification task is a slightly better descriptor of the data compared to the mean for the MB-CDI. This indicates that the mean for the object naming/identification task is a better descriptor of the data compared to the MB-CDI.
Correlation between the object naming/identification task and the MB-CDI…84
The MB-CDI had a larger standard deviation from the mean compared to the object naming/identification task. Cronbach's alpha values for the object naming/identification task and only the 25 items from the SAE MB-CDI.
Chapter conclusion
The descriptive statistics reported below were calculated based on the results obtained from the administration of the 25 items of the object naming/identification task and the MB-CDI only. Furthermore, the correlation between the language domains of the object naming/identification task and the entire vocabulary section of the MB-CDI indicated a significant correlation between the two assessments in terms of vocabulary.
Introduction to chapter
Results
Objective 3 a
Participant A19C, who was the youngest participant at 0.8 years of age, received the lowest score overall, 0%, and the highest score, 16%, was received by six of the 10 participants. Results from the object naming/identification task showed that half of the Afrikaans-speaking toddlers received an overall score above 50% and the other half received an overall score below 50%.
Objective 3 b
The total vocabulary scores achieved by Afrikaans-speaking children on the entire vocabulary portion of the MB-CDI were all below 50%. Total vocabulary scores achieved by Afrikaans-speaking toddlers on the entire vocabulary portion of the MB-CDI varied widely, with the majority of scores being less than 50%.
Data analysis
Descriptive statistics
Mean, range and standard deviation of object naming/identification task results compared to MB-CDI results for Afrikaans-speaking infants. Mean, range and standard deviation of object naming/identification task results compared to MB-CDI results for Afrikaans-speaking preschoolers.
Correlation between the object naming/identification task and the MB-CDI…97
Cronbach's alpha values for the object naming/identification task and only the 25 items included in the African UK-CDI. When analyzed separately, high internal consistency was also found for the receptive domain, with an alpha value of >0.94.
Chapter conclusion
How many of the other adults (those who are not family members) in the other household are male? How many of the other adults (those who are not family members) in the other household are female?
Introduction to chapter
Language acquisition of SAE and Afrikaans
The scores obtained by Afrikaans-speaking toddlers on the MB-CDI varied widely; however, this was anticipated due to research finding that there is a considerable amount of variation in early lexical development of young children (Fenson et al., 1994). The total vocabulary scores obtained by SAE-speaking infants and toddlers after administration of the entire MB-CDI indicated that although scores varied considerably, which was expected due to their age (Fenson et al., 1994), the majority of participants scored below 50%.
Factors influencing language acquisition
2021) found that sex was the second largest predictor of vocabulary size for both SAE-speaking and Afrikaans-speaking children. This fits the findings for SAE-speaking toddlers but not for SAE-speaking babies, nor for Afrikaans-speaking babies and toddlers.
Validity of the South African MB-CDIs
SAE
The correlation between the object naming/identification task and the scores from the entire vocabulary section of the MB-CDI also showed a significant correlation (r=0.901), although the Pearson's correlation coefficient was lower than for only the 25 items included in both assessments. Following a similar trend, the comparison of the results from the object naming/identification task and whole vocabulary and gesture sections of the MB-CDI indicated a high internal consistency for the language domains.
Afrikaans
This further suggests that if a participant is likely to perform well on the linguistic domains of the object naming/identification task, he is likely to perform well on the entire vocabulary section of the MB-CDI. This suggests that the items measure well overall, and for each of the domains separately.
Chapter conclusion
Concurrent validity of the Language Development Survey: Associations with the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. How many of the other adults (those who are not family members) in your household are male?
