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

Houston-Price, C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6368-142X, Mather, E. and Sakkalou, E. (2007) Discrepancy between parental reports of infants' receptive vocabulary and infants' behaviour in a preferential looking task. Journal of Child Language, 34 (4). pp. 701-724. ISSN 0305-0009 doi: 10.1017/s0305000907008124

Abstract/Summary

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 CD1, a British English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CD1 (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 CD1. 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.