Abstract
Developmental norms for young children’s vocabularies have a number of applications in research design, assessment, and intervention, but have previously been very difficult to obtain. In the present study, month-by-month norms for comprehension and production of 396 words from 8 to 16 months, and production of 680 words from 16 to 30 months, were derived from a norming study of 1,789 children between the ages of 8 and 30 months using the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Fenson et al., 1993). The norms are available in the form of a database program, LEX, for MS-DOS-based computers.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bates, E., Marchman, V., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., Reilly, J., &Hartung, J. (1994). Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early vocabulary.Journal of Child Language,21, 85–123.
Dale, P. S. (1991). The validity of a parent report measure of vocabulary and syntax at 24 months.Journal of Speech & Hearing Research,34, 565–571.
Dale, P. S., Bates, E., Reznick, J. S., &Morisset, C. (1989). The validity of a parent report instrument of child language at 20 months.Journal of Child Language,16, 239–249.
Fenson, L.,Dale, P. S.,Bates, E.,Reznick, J. S.,Thal, D., &Pethick, S. J. (1994). Variability in early communicative development.Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development,59 (Serial No. 242).
Fenson, L., Dale, P. S., Reznick, J. S., Thal, D., Bates, E., Hartung, J. P., Pethick, S., &Reilly, J. S. (1993).The MacArthur communicative development inventories: User’s guide and technical manual. San Diego: Singular.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
The lexical norms reported here were derived from the norming study ofThe MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (Fenton et al., 1993). The development of the inventories, the norming study, and the development of the LEX program were supported by grants from the MacArthur Research Network on Early Childhood Transitions. We are grateful to our colleagues on that project, E. Bates, J. Reilly, J. S. Reznick, and D. Thal for their contributions to this research, and to S. J. Pethick for his invaluable assistance in preparing the data for lexical analysis.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Dale, P.S., Fenson, L. Lexical development norms for young children. Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, & Computers 28, 125–127 (1996). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03203646
Received:
Accepted:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03203646