The Hebrew Web Communicative Development Inventory (MB-CDI): Lexical Development Growth Curves

Abstract

This article presents data on lexical development of 881 Israeli Hebrew-speaking monolingual toddlers ages 1;0 to 2;0. A Web-based version of the Hebrew MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (H-MB-CDI) was used for data collection. Growth curves for expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, actions and gestures were characterized. Developmental trajectories of toddlers with various demographic characteristics, such as education, income, religiosity level, birth order of the child, and child-care arrangements were compared. Results show that the lexical growth curves for Hebrew are comparable to those reported for other languages. Sex, birth order, and child-care arrangements were found to influence the size of lexicons. It is recommended that the trajectories presented here be used as norms for lexical growth among typical Hebrew-speaking toddlers in the second year of life.

Parental Reports of Preschoolers' Lexical and Syntactic Development: Validation of the CDI-III for European Portuguese

“…Research has also consistently shown that mothers with higher educational levels provide more linguistic input, use a more varied vocabulary and more complex syntax, and more frequently perform activities such as reading for their children, than mothers with lower educational levels (Hoff, 2006;Gonzalez et al, 2017;Sultana et al, 2020), which may explain the consistent relationship that has been found between maternal education and children's language abilities. Regardless of these findings, some studies, mostly conducted with children up to 2 years old, did not find significant differences as a function of maternal education (Stolt et al, 2007;Gendler-Shalev and Dromi, 2021).…”

The effect of phonological complexity on the order in which words are acquired in early childhood

“…The MB-CDI WG questionnaire adapted to Hebrew was used. The questionnaire was found to be a reliable and valid tool for evaluating the early lexical development of Hebrew-speaking toddlers during the second year of life (Gendler-Shalev & Dromi, 2021). It consists of a list of 428 words in 18 semantic and grammatical categories (for a detailed description, see Gendler-Shalev & Dromi, 2021).…”

“…The questionnaire was found to be a reliable and valid tool for evaluating the early lexical development of Hebrew-speaking toddlers during the second year of life (Gendler-Shalev & Dromi, 2021). It consists of a list of 428 words in 18 semantic and grammatical categories (for a detailed description, see Gendler-Shalev & Dromi, 2021). Parents were asked to mark the words that the child 'understands' and the words that the child 'says and understands'.…”

“…Toddlers across different languages understand many words before they produce their first word (Bates et al, 1989; Frank et al, 2021). For example, 18-month-old, Hebrew-speaking toddlers who ranked in the 50th percentile of comprehension and production have 240 words in their receptive lexicon in contrast to just 80 words in their expressive lexicon (Gendler-Shalev & Dromi, 2021).…”

“…Toddlers in the 90th percentile have more than 200 words in their expressive vocabulary compared with 80 words of toddlers in the 50th percentile. Toddlers ranked in the 90th percentile of the comprehension vocabulary have more than 350 words in their receptive vocabulary compared with the 240 words of toddlers in the 50th percentile (Gendler-Shalev & Dromi, 2021). This variation necessitates data collection from a large sample to determine typical vocabulary development characteristics that can be generalized.…”