SRCLD Presentation Details
  Title  
       
    The MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories and Late Talkers in English and Cantonese  
Author(s)
Paul Fletcher - University College Cork, Ireland
Donna Thal - San Diego State University

SRCLD Info
SRCLD Year: 2004
Presentation Type: Invited Speaker
Presentation Time: (na)
Abstract
In this presentation we will outline findings from longitudinal studies of ‘Late Talkers’ – children who fall below the 10th percentile for vocabulary development. Data on English-speaking children come from longitudinal studies of children in the USA who were identified using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (CDI). The Cantonese-speaking children were selected from a norming study of the Cantonese adaptation of the CDI (the CCDI), a form that was culturally and linguistically adapted for infants in Hong Kong. The availability of these instruments and of follow-up information, including both parent report and observational data, allows us to track the developmental progress of late talkers, and to compare and contrast results across these two typologically distinct languages. We will examine differences in vocabulary composition across late talker and typically developing groups within and between English and Cantonese. We will compare late comprehenders, late producers, and typically developing children in both languages. We will also look at two different cut-off points for delay (5th and 10th percentile), and the relative outcomes for children from the groups defined by these cut-offs.
Author Biosketch(es)

Paul Fletcher. Ph.D.
     Paul Fletcher is Professor, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences,
University College Cork. He moved to Cork in May 2003 after nearly eight
years at the University of Hong Kong. During the Hong Kong sojourn he worked
on language impairment in Cantonese-speaking children, and collaborated with
Twila Tardif, now at the University of Michigan, on norming studies for CDIs
in Beijing (for Putonghua) and Hong Kong (for Cantonese). Longitudinal 'Late
Talker' studies arising out of the norming studies continue in both centres.
Prior to Hong Kong he worked for many years at the University of Reading in
England. His undergraduate degree is from Oxford University, and he has
postgraduate degrees from the Universities of Reading and Alberta.

 

Donna Thal, Ph.D.
     Dr. Donna Thal is Professor in the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences at San Diego State University and Research Psychologist at the Center for Research in Language at the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Thal holds the M.S. degree in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Brooklyn College and the Ph.D. degree in Speech and Hearing Sciences from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York. She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research in Language at UCSD (1985-1988), an Assistant Professor at Hofstra University (1981-1985), and an Assistant Professor at Queens College of CUNY (1979-1981). Dr. Thal is a developmental psycholinguist and a certified and licensed speech-language pathologist who has conducted research in a number of areas including normal and disordered development of language and cognition, studies of children with focal brain injury and studies of children with delayed onset of language. She has also carried out studies of language development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Her most recent work focuses on early identification of risk for clinically significant language impairment and is funded by RO1 grant from the NIH National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders. Dr. Thal is and ASHA Fellow. She is also an editorial consultant for language for the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She was the California State nominee for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation Outstanding Clinical Achievement Award in 1996, received the Monty Distinguished Faculty Award from San Diego State University 1998, the Albert W. Johnson Research Lecturer Award from SDSU in 1999, and was the Wang Family Excellence Award nominee from SDSU in 2000. She served a 4 year term on the Communicative Disorders Review Committee for the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders from 1998-2002. Dr. Thal is a member of the CDI Advisory Board and is a co-author of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories and the MacArthur Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas.