Cross-Cultural Exploration of Growth in Expressive Communication Between English and Portuguese-Speaking Infants and Toddlers

Abstract

There is a need for instruments that can assess skills at an early age and that are valid on an international level to support large-scale multicultural research of child development. The Early Communication Indicator (ECI) was developed in the United States to measure expressive communication in the early years, supporting early intervention practitioners and other professionals. It is designed to be applied in any context and in any language, making it applicable internationally. A study involving 480 Portuguese infants and toddlers (aged 6–42 months) that used the ECI provided an opportunity to explore the development of expressive communication using the ECI in a language other than English and in a novel cultural context. The results confirmed a continuum of communication growth and showed similarities with the trajectories found in the U.S. and Australian populations, where the ECI is widely used, for example, to measure communication and monitor intervention in early childhood. Implications for future studies and contributions to theory and practice provided by these new cross-cultural data on ECI are discussed.