Utility of the Language Use Inventory in Young Children at Elevated Likelihood of Autism.

PURPOSE: The aims of this study were (a) to evaluate the convergent validity of the Language Use Inventory (LUI) with measures of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptoms, language, and social skills and (b) to assess discriminant validity of the LUI with measures of nonlanguage skills, including daily living skills and motor development. METHOD: This study sample included participants from a longitudinal study (n = 239) of infant siblings with elevated familial likelihood of ASD and lower familial likelihood. Assessment measures completed at 36 months included the LUI, the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule-Second Edition (ADOS-2), the Mullen Scales of Early Learning, and the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales-Second Edition. Bivariate Pearson correlations were estimated between ADOS-2 comparison scores and four language and social skills measures. Additional correlations were estimated between LUI total scores and standard scores from nonlanguage measures. A series of Fisher's Z transformations were applied to evaluate whether bivariate correlations were significantly different. RESULTS: All four language and social skill measures were moderately to strongly associated with each other and ASD symptom severity scores. The correlation between ADOS-2 comparison scores and LUI total scores was significantly stronger than ADOS-2 correlations with all other measures. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings provide support for the LUI as a feasible, pragmatic language-targeted instrument for inclusion in early developmental evaluations prompted by language concerns. Administration of the LUI may accelerate earlier referral for a comprehensive assessment of ASD symptoms. Given the high correlation with ADOS-2 scores, an LUI total score in a clinical range of concern may encourage a clinician to refer families for a full diagnostic evaluation of ASD.

Assessing pragmatics in early childhood with the Language Use Inventory across seven languages.

The Language Use Inventory (LUI) is a parent-report measure of the pragmatic functions of young children's language, standardized and norm-referenced in English (Canada) for children aged 18-47 months. The unique focus of the LUI, along with its appeal to parents, reliability and validity, and usefulness in both research and clinical contexts has prompted research teams globally to translate and adapt it to other languages. In this review, we describe the original LUI's key features and report on processes used by seven different research teams to translate and adapt it to Arabic, French, Italian, Mandarin, Norwegian, Polish, and Portuguese. We also review data from the studies of the seven translated versions, which indicate that all the LUI versions were reliable and sensitive to developmental changes. The review demonstrates that the LUI, informed by a social-cognitive and functional approach to language development, captures growth in children's language use across a range of linguistic and cultural contexts, and as such, can serve as a valuable tool for clinical and research purposes.

Reliability, validity and developmental sensitivity of the Language Use Inventory (LUI) in the Chinese context.

BACKGROUND: Pragmatics has generally been defined as the ability to use language in social situations, it is commonly regarded as the third major component of language ability. To date, there is no tool for assessing early pragmatic development of Chinese-speaking children. AIMS: To describe the translation of the Language Use Inventory (LUI) from English to Mandarin Chinese and to report findings on the Chinese version's reliability, validity and developmental sensitivity. METHODS & PROCEDURES: The original English version of the LUI was translated into Mandarin Chinese. Parents of 177 typically developing (TD) toddlers and preschool children completed the inventory to examine its internal reliability and construct validity and how scores differed across ages and sexes. A total of 31 parents out of the 177 completed the LUI-Mandarin, again within 4 weeks, to assess test-retest reliability. To examine discriminative validity, 43 parents of age- and sex-matched TD children and children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) recruited from Nanjing Brain Hospital affiliated with Nanjing Medical University completed the LUI-Mandarin. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: Cronbach's alpha values for the LUI-Mandarin's three parts and for 11 of 12 LUI-Mandarin subscales were 0.707-0.992, with most values in the 0.825-0.992 range. Test-retest reliability ranged from 0.66 to 0.95, indicating good to excellent reliability. Factor analysis of the LUI-Mandarin revealed two different factors, and the total variance explained was 74.38%. The LUI-Mandarin total scores and subscale scores increased with age for both boys and girls, providing evidence of the inventory's developmental sensitivity. Girls, however, had higher total scores than boys at earlier ages (18-23 months). The results of the discriminant validity study revealed that performance was significantly lower in the ASD group than in the TD group with respect to LUI total scores and subscale scores (except for subscale A). CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: The LUI-Mandarin is the first and only questionnaire available in China that evaluates the pragmatic language skills of children aged between 18 and 47 months. The results of the study show that the LUI-Mandarin is a valid and reliable tool for Chinese toddlers and preschool children. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on this subject The LUI is a parent-report questionnaire that can provide comprehensive information about very young children's communicative competence. It is widely used both for assessment and to guide intervention. Additionally, it has been translated into French, Italian, Polish, Arabic, Portuguese and Norwegian and it shows good reliability and validity. What this paper adds to existing knowledge In the present study we describe the translation of the LUI from English to Mandarin Chinese and report findings on the Chinese version's reliability, validity and developmental sensitivity. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The LUI-Mandarin is the first and only questionnaire available in China that can evaluate pragmatic language skills of children aged between 18 and 47 months. The results show that the LUI-Mandarin is a valid and reliable tool for use with Chinese toddlers and preschool children.

The Assessment of Early Pragmatic Development: A Study of the Reliability and Validity of the Language Use Inventory-Italian.

Purpose Pragmatics is receiving much attention in both the fields of developmental and clinical psychology; however, there is a dearth of instruments to assess pragmatic abilities specifically among young toddler-age children. The aim of the current study was to test the psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Language Use Inventory (LUI), named the LUI-Italian, a parent report measure assessing pragmatic language development in children 18-47 months of age. Method Parents of Italian-speaking children who ranged in age between 18 and 47 months completed the LUI-Italian at T1 (N = 389) and 1 week later (N = 53). At T1, children were also administered the First Language Test (Test del Primo Linguaggio [TPL]), a direct measure of pragmatics, vocabulary, and syntax. Results Cronbach's alpha values were at or above acceptable levels. Factor analysis and test-retest confirmed the strong structure and reliability of the LUI-Italian. Some evidence for concurrent validity was found, as shown by associations between the LUI-Italian and the TPL. Conclusions The LUI-Italian demonstrated good psychometric properties relating to reliability, thus providing a sound basis for proceeding to a standardization study, and supporting cross-cultural comparison of pragmatic development and further exploration of profiles of pragmatic competence for children displaying language impairments or delay. Future studies need to further test concurrent, divergent, and predictive validity of the LUI-Italian.

Ratunku! or Just Tunku! Evidence for the Reliability and Concurrent Validity of the Language Use Inventory-Polish.

Purpose To date, there is no tool for assessing early pragmatic development of Polish-speaking children. This study aimed to adapt to Polish a standardized parent report measure, the Language Use Inventory (LUI; O'Neill, 2009, in order to enable cross-cultural comparisons and to use the LUI-Polish to screen for pragmatic development in children 18-47 months of age. We concentrated on the sociocultural and functional adaptation of LUI and aimed to demonstrate its reliability, developmental sensitivity, and concurrent validity. Method Parents completed an online version of LUI-Polish, longitudinally at 3 time points (when the child was 20, 32, and 44 months old). In addition, parents completed the Polish adaptations of the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months and the Language Development Survey at 24 months. Children's spontaneous speech was assessed at 24 months, and their expressive and receptive vocabulary was assessed at 36 months. Results All 3 parts of the LUI-Polish (Gestures, Words, and Sentences) showed very good levels of internal consistency at each time point. Significant correlations were observed between all parts of the LUI-Polish at all 3 measurement time points. The expected developmental trajectory was observed for boys and girls providing evidence of its developmental sensitivity for children between the ages of 2 and 4 years: an increase with age in the total score (due to an increase in Words and Sentences) and a decrease in Gestures. Supporting concurrent validity, significant correlations were found between children's performance on (a) the LUI-Polish at 20 months and the Questionnaire for Communication and Early Language at 22 months as well as the Language Development Survey and spontaneous speech measures at 24 months and (b) the LUI-Polish at 32 months and the 2 measures of vocabulary comprehension and production at 36 months. Conclusion The Polish adaptation of the LUI demonstrated good psychometric properties that provide a sound basis for cross-cultural comparisons and further research toward norming of the LUI-Polish. Moreover, the expected developmental trajectory in the pragmatic development of Polish children was observed.

Storybooks aren't just for fun: narrative and non-narrative picture books foster equal amounts of generic language during mother-toddler book sharing.

Parents and children encounter a variety of animals and objects in the early picture books they share, but little is known about how the context in which these entities are presented influences talk about them. The present study investigated how the presence or absence of a visual narrative context influences mothers' tendency to refer to animals as individual characters or as members of a kind when sharing picture books with their toddlers (mean age 21.3 months). Mother-child dyads shared both a narrative and a non-narrative book, each featuring six animals and matched in terms of length and quantity of text. Mothers made more specific (individual-referring) statements about animals in the narrative books, whereas they provided more labels for animals in the non-narrative books. But, of most interest, the frequency and proportion of mothers' use of generic (kind-referring) utterances did not differ across the two different types of books. Further coding of the content of the utterances revealed that mothers provided more story-specific descriptions of states and actions of the animals when sharing narrative books and more physical descriptions of animals when sharing non-narrative books. However, the two books did not differ in terms of their elicitation of natural facts about the animals. Overall, although the two types of books encouraged different types of talk from mothers, they stimulated generic language and talk about natural facts to an equal degree. Implications for learning from picture storybooks and book genre selection in classrooms and home reading are discussed.

Predicting later language outcomes from the Language Use Inventory.

PURPOSE: To examine the predictive validity of the Language Use Inventory (LUI), a parent report of language use by children 18-47 months old (O'Neill, 2009). METHOD: 348 children whose parents had completed the LUI were reassessed at 5-6 years old with standardized, norm-referenced language measures and parent report of developmental history. The relationship between scores on the LUI and later measures was examined through correlation, binary classification, and receiver operating characteristic curve analysis. RESULTS: For children aged 24-47 months at the time of LUI completion, LUI scores correlated significantly with language measure scores. Sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), and negative predictive value (NPV) were also calculated for 4 cutoff scores on the LUI, including -1.64 SD, a score that maximized sensitivity to 81% and specificity to 93%. For children aged 18-23 months at the time of LUI completion, specificity and NPV were high, but sensitivity and PPV were lower than desirable. CONCLUSIONS: The results provide initial support for the LUI's predictive validity, particularly for children 24-47 months, and suggest the LUI can serve as an indicator of later language outcomes in referred populations. The results compare favorably to findings for other early child-language measures.

A step at a time: preliterate children's simulation of narrative movement during story comprehension.

A growing body of work suggests that narrative comprehension involves the simulation of the described events and actions (e.g., Barsalou, 2008; Matlock, 2004). Preliterate children's ability to simulate a narrative character's movements is explored here in three studies. Children's simulations of a character's movements were found to be constrained by their expectation of the duration of the described activities (i.e., walking vs. driving) and by their expectations about the motivating influence of certain psychological factors (i.e., character being eager or not eager to get to a location). These findings reveal an ability among preliterate children to create impressively rich and dynamic mental representations of narrative events and address, with a novel methodology, an identified need for greater exploration of precursors to narrative comprehension.

The emergence of the ability to track a character's mental perspective in narrative.

In comprehending stories, adults create mental models from which they follow the actions of the characters from the characters' different mental vantage points. Using a novel methodology, this study is the first to examine when children attain the narrative ability to track the mental perspective of characters. That is, when do children follow the actions of a story to different locations that a character is thinking about? The results of Study 1 demonstrate that this ability is nascent in 3-year-olds but adult-like by age 5. Study 2 demonstrates that 3-year-olds' difficulty is the result of the mention of the character's mental state per se rather than task complexity. Together, these studies shed new light on the development of narrative cognition in humans.

The language use inventory for young children: a parent-report measure of pragmatic language development for 18- to 47-month-old children.

PURPOSE: To demonstrate the internal reliability and discriminative validity of the Language Use Inventory for Young Children (LUI; D. K. O'Neill, 2002), a newly developed parent-report measure designed to assess pragmatic language development in 18-47-month-olds. METHOD: To examine internal reliability, the LUI was completed by mail by 177 parents recruited from the University of Waterloo's Centre for Child Studies database, 175 of whom completed the LUI again within 4 weeks to assess test-retest reliability. To examine discriminative validity, 49 parents of children awaiting assessment at a local speech-language clinic and 49 parents of typically developing children recruited from the Centre for Child Studies database and matched in age and sex to the clinic group completed the LUI. RESULTS: Alpha values for the subscales of the LUI were at or above acceptable levels (.80-.98), and steady growth in children's pragmatic language development was demonstrated. The study of discriminant validity revealed sensitivity and specificity levels over 95%. CONCLUSIONS: The LUI's internal reliability and stability were strongly supported and its sensitivity and specificity in distinguishing between typically developing and language-delayed children exceeded even the most stringent criteria of 90% accuracy.

Acting and planning on the basis of a false belief: its effects on 3-year-old children's reasoning about their own false beliefs.

This study examined 3-year-olds' explanations for actions of theirs that were premised on a false belief. In Experiment 1, children stated what they thought was inside a crayon box. After stating "crayons," they went to retrieve some paper to draw on. Children were then shown that the box contained candles and were asked to (a) state their initial belief and (b) explain their action of getting paper. Children who were unable to retrieve their false belief were unable to correctly explain their action. Experiments 2 and 3 ruled out several alternative interpretations for these findings. In Experiment 4, children planned and acted on their false belief. Again, children who were unable to retrieve their false belief were unable to correctly explain their action.

Episodic future thinking.

Thinking about the future is an integral component of human cognition - one that has been claimed to distinguish us from other species. Building on the construct of episodic memory, we introduce the concept of 'episodic future thinking': a projection of the self into the future to pre-experience an event. We argue that episodic future thinking has explanatory value when considering recent work in many areas of psychology: cognitive, social and personality, developmental, clinical and neuropsychology. Episodic future thinking can serve as a unifying concept, connecting aspects of diverse research findings and identifying key questions requiring further reflection and study.