Early intentional communication as a predictor of language development in young toddlers

Abstract

Interrelations between various types of early intentional communi cation measures, and their relations to children's concurrent and subsequent language skills and maternal interactional sensitivity were studied in a sample of 111 mother-infant pairs. Intentional communication was assessed at 14 months of age using a composite of early actions and gestures derived from parental reports (MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories, MCDI), and measures of early joint attentional behaviours obtained via observations of parent-child play interaction. The sum of actions and gestures and the measures of joint attentional behaviours correlated significantly with each other suggesting that the measures obtained using different techniques and data sources partly tap the same social-cognitive skills. However, the inter relations between various types of joint attentional behaviours did not indicate a single coherent structure. Whereas the parental ratings of intentional communication significantly predicted both later language comprehension and production, the relations between observed joint attentional behaviours and language skills varied depending on the specific aspects of these behaviours that were measured. Both sets of measures of intentional communi cation were related to concurrent maternal interactional sensitivity, which in turn predicted children's language comprehension at