ERIC Number: EJ1124086
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-Dec
Pages: 7
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1092-4388
EISSN: N/A
Vocabulary Development in European Portuguese: A Replication Study Using the Language Development Survey
Rescorla, Leslie; Nyame, Josephine; Dias, Pedro
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v59 n6 p1484-1490 Dec 2016
Purpose: Our objective was to replicate previous crosslinguistic findings by comparing Portuguese and U.S. children with respect to (a) effects of language, gender, and age on vocabulary size; (b) lexical composition; and (c) late talking. Method: We used the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989) with children (18-35 months) learning European Portuguese (n = 181) and English (n = 206). Results: In both languages, girls had higher vocabulary scores than boys and vocabulary scores increased with age. Portuguese LDS scores were significantly lower than English scores, but the effect size was small. Crosslinguistic concordance of percentage use scores yielded a Q correlation of 0.50, with 64 of the "top 100" words being exact matches. Crosslinguistic concordance was highest for the youngest age group. In both languages, vocabulary composition in late talkers (children = 24 months with < 50 words) was highly correlated with composition in vocabulary sizematched younger children. Conclusions: Results replicated previous Greek, Korean, and Italian LDS studies. The early lexicons of typical talkers and late talkers contained many of the same words, indicating considerable universality and suggesting good targets for clinical intervention.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Vocabulary Development, Portuguese, Language Acquisition, Comparative Analysis, Gender Differences, Age Differences, Delayed Speech, English, Check Lists, Toddlers, Correlation, Parent Surveys, Expressive Language, Disability Identification, Screening Tests, Effect Size, Replication (Evaluation)
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Portugal; United States
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Language Development Survey
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A