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Vo l u m e 3 4 N u m b e r 2 J u n e 2 0 0 9 31
The Australian Early Development Index, who does it measure:
Piaget or Vygotsky’s child?
Joseph Agbenyega
Faculty of Education, Monash University
sEVErAL PsyChOLOgICAL InsTruMEnTs have been developed
and used over
the years to measure various domains of child development. The
Australian Early
Development Index (AEDI) is a current assessment tool being
used as a community
measure of young children’s development. It measures the
following domains: Physical
health and wellbeing; Social competence; Emotional maturity;
Language and cognitive
skills; Communication skills and general knowledge. This
article examines the tacit
nuanced construction of the child within the AEDI, and
critiques this within a cultural-
historical theoretical perspective of child development. The
paper argues that the AEDI
image of the child has its roots in Piagetian and Gesellian stage
theories of universality.
This position is juxtaposed with more encompassing views held
in the Vygotskian
tradition. The paper advances arguments for an alternative
consideration of child
development that does not prescribe vulnerability to certain

groups of children.
Introduction
In ThIs PAPEr I WILL explore three different
theoretical traditions of development—Piaget, Gesell
and Vygotsky—focusing on the root belief structures.
Following this effort I will analyse how each theoretical
orientation shapes the Australian Early Development
Index (AEDI). I will then concentrate on the contribution
of Vygotsky’s cultural–historical theory to reframe a more
comprehensive view of looking at child development
and measurement. The purpose for doing this is to
tease out the tacit deficit model in the AEDI and how
its universal usage creates and prescribes vulnerability
to certain groups of children.
Theoretical perspectives on child
development
This section begins by unpacking the important
components of Piaget’s cognitive developmental
theory, followed by Gesell’s and Vygotsky’s as these
relate to the AEDI. The choice of Piaget’s and Gesell’s
philosophical positions are important to this paper
because these traditions often provide the framework
for constructing psychometric tests for measuring
school readiness from a maturational and biological
perspective, as does the AEDI. On the other hand,
Vygotsky’s cultural–historical theory is considered in
this paper as it provides an alternative and a broader
philosophical framework beyond a maturational
and biological perspective for thinking about child
development and school readiness.

Views about development are situated within broader
systems of theoretical knowledge. Damon (1998)
argues that the field of child development within the
last century was dominated by ‘three grand systems’:
Piaget, psychoanalysis and learning theory (p. xv).
Jean Piaget is renowned for his work on cognitive
development of children. His work focused on the
processes that allow children to know, understand
and think about the world. Piaget’s key contribution
to the field of child development is his notion that all
children pass through a fixed sequence, through a
series of universal stages of cognitive development.
He emphasised that each stage of the developmental
continuum is associated with an increase in quantity
of information children acquire as well as the quality
of knowledge and understanding that come to them.
Piaget used assimilation and accommodation as
basic principles to ground and explain his theoretical
ideas. ‘Assimilation’ in his theoretical context refers
to a situation where children use their current state of
cognitive development to experience and understand
the world (Daniels, 2001; Piaget, 1929). On the other
A u s t r a l a s i a n J o u r n a l o f E a r l y C h i l d h o o
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hand, ‘accommodation’ refers to changes in existing
ways of children’s thinking in response to experiences
of new stimuli (Berk, 2006). Piaget did not make a
distinction about how children from different cultures
assimilate or accommodate in the developmental
continuum. It can be argued that his theory considered
child development as occurring linearly and universally
in stages across all cultures (White, Hayes & Livesey,

2005). This is reiterated by Lee and Walsh (2001) who
state that Piaget’s theory perceives every child as
developing the same way ‘across time’ and place with
just minor adjustments (p. 74).
Piaget’s particular insight on child development centred
on the role of maturation in children’s increasing capacity
to understand their world (White, Hayes & Livesey,
2005). This implies that psychological and biological
maturity of children determines their ability to complete
certain tasks (Piaget, 1929). Although Piaget perceived
children as active participants in their environment, the
universality of his theory rejects cultural diversity and
how varied cultural artefacts and motives (Fleer, 2008)
impact on children’s development differently.
Another prominent authority on child development,
Arnold Gesell, was steered by maturational perspectives
of development. Gesell did not dispute the influence
of external factors such as the environment on child
development; however he emphasised biological
(intrinsic) factors as the main determinants of
development. He argues that maturation is the key
regulatory mechanism for development (Dalton, 2005),
and that environmental factors may play a screening
or selective role determining which of competing
potencies are to be realised (Dalton, 2005; Lerner, 1998).
Gesell believes that all normal children go through the
same sequences, but at their own pace. Gesell was
very passionate about developmental sequencing,
what happens at what stage of development and the
processes that support this (Gesell & Ilg, 1949; White,
Hayes & Livesay, 2005). His conceptual term ‘maturation’
implies the process and mechanism by which genes
direct the development of intrinsically determined
age-related changes (White, Hayes & Livesay, 2005).

Although Gesell acknowledges variation in the rate of
development, he emphasised that all children progress
through the same universal path of development (Gesell
& Ilg, 1949; White, Hayes & Livesay, 2005). As such his
theory provided the basis for comparative assessment
for evaluating the developmental status of individual
children in comparison with others (White, Hayes &
Livesay, 2005).
Lev Vygotsky’s cultural–historical theory de-emphasises
stage and universality and accentuates that a full
understanding of development is impossible without
taking into account the culture in which children
develop (Fleer, 2008). He argues that children acquire
understanding of the world through their problem-
solving interactions with adults and other children. As
children play and cooperate with others, they learn
what is important in their society and, at the same
time, advance cognitively in their understanding of
the world (Fleer, 2008; Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1987).
Thus it can be argued that Vygotsky’s cultural–historical
theory accentuates cultural views of child development
(Berk, 2006; Rogoff, 2003; Vygotsky, 1987). Cultural–
historical theory provides a more comprehensive
view of perceiving and focusing on development as
both cultural and biological. Cultural–historical theory
stresses the influence of cultural elements of shared
beliefs, values, knowledges, skills and different ways of
doing things that shape the life of the next generation
(children) (D’Andrade, 1984; Lee & Walsh, 2001; Rogoff,
2003; Vygotsky, 1987). Vygotsky’s cultural–historical
theory unveils culturally specific determination of
development that distances itself from universality
(Berk, 2006; Dahlberg, Moss, & Pence, 1999). He posits
that children’s social situations contain cultural variables

that are continually changing in space and time (Rogoff,
2003), that must be rigorously explored in order to
fully understand children’s development. Hedegaard
(2008) reiterates that children’s development takes
place in a dialectical relationship in which the child itself
determines which environmental characteristics are
relevant and what represents a noticeable stimulus that
would trigger a particular behaviour; and their behaviour
in turn continuously affects the environment through
their activities. This notion of a dialectical (interactional)
relationship between environmental and cultural factors
and biology as shaping individual development provides
a framework beyond the mechanistic (linear) conception
of development proposed by Piaget and Gesell.
Key differences and/or similarities
Like Piaget, Gesell had roots in biological science, and
perceived cognitive development as predominantly
biological (Kincheloe, 2008). Also, both Piaget’s
and Gesell’s theories suggest that processes and
achievements are universal in all children regardless
of circumstance or culture; that the individual person
is the main unit of concern; and that development is
progressive or that each child ‘improves’ over time
through a set sequence of positive changes (Kincheloe,
2008). These perceptions influence the construction
and use of psychometric tests used to measure the
universality of children’s development, which take
little notice of the tacit cultural factors that compose
individual identities and behaviours. Similarly, the root
of the AEDI can be traced to the fundamental tenets of
Piaget’s and Gesell’s concept of school readiness.
The next section examines how the child is measured on
the AEDI and how the processes adopted compare to

Piaget’s and Gesell’s theories of universality. Vygotsky’s
cultural–historical theory is then juxtaposed and used as
the basis for advancing arguments against the current
way in which school readiness and child development is
positioned and measured by the AEDI.
The AEDI
The Australian Early Development Index (AEDI) is
an offspring of the Early Development Index (EDI)
developed by Offord Centre for Child Studies in Canada.
The development of the AEDI has involved three
stages: modification of the Canadian EDI by testing
the EDI for Australia; refining the EDI instrument for
Australia; and pilot testing the Australian EDI. The AEDI,
which became operational in 2004, is now at the third
stage of validation and cycle 2 testing (2007–10). The
instrument is being implemented nationally by the
Centre for Community Child Health in partnership with
the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. All
teachers of children in their first year of formal full-time
schooling whose parents have given informed consent
(Sayers et al., 2007) are eligible to complete the AEDI.
The AEDI currently tests five definitive domains of child
development—which are closely linked to predictors
of good adult health, education and social outcomes—
by asking first grade teachers to complete an online
questionnaire (both nominal and Likert Scales) of about
100 questions related to: Physical health and wellbeing;
Social competence; Emotional maturity; Language

and cognitive skills; Communication skills and general
knowledge. Sample questions on physical wellbeing
read: ‘Is independent in toileting habits most of the
time? Is well coordinated?’ Examples of language and
cognitive skills questions are: ‘Ability to use language
effectively in English? Ability to tell a story?’ Some of
the social and emotional questions read: ‘Is eager to
play with a new toy; demonstrate self control?’ The
AEDI is not designed to:
■ diagnose children with specific learning disabilities
or areas of developmental delay
■ recommend children who should be placed in
special education categories
■ indicate who should receive extra classroom
assistance or whether children should be held back
a grade
■ recommend specific teaching approaches for
individual children and/or reflect the performance
of the school or the quality of teaching.
Its purpose is to provide information about how
communities have supported children before school
and to provide information to every community about
how their local children are developing at the time they
start school (Sayers et al., 2007).
The AEDI results are provided to communities in the
form of an:
‘AEDI Community Profile, which include[s]
background information about the participating
schools and children, and the AEDI results, in both

table and map format. In addition, the Community
Profile also include[s] geographic maps that display
the distribution of socio-economic, demographic,
health and education factors obtained from a range of
national or state data sources. The socio-demographic
maps use the same suburb or area boundaries as the
AEDI maps.’ (Sayers et al., 2007, p. 5)
The results, which use colour shades from light green
to deep green, categorise communities at five levels,
from least vulnerable to most vulnerable. This enables
communities to determine the level of children’s
vulnerability, so as to plan the best future for them.
Although individual AEDI student records are not
available, schools can access a school report showing
the percentage of students in their Prep (first year of
school) cohort doing well developmentally, and the
percentage considered developmentally vulnerable
across the five developmental domains (Sayers et al.,
2007). However, cultural psychologists have argued
that the application of dominant grand developmental
theories that focused on biology and universality ignore
the influence of culture in the developmental process
(Bruner, 1996; Cole, 1996; Miller, 1999; Shweder et
al., 1998), and that development is far more than just
biology. It is ‘the process of growing into a culture’ (Lee
& Walsh, 2001, p. 80). In this regard, I argue that the
measurement of child readiness in one institutional
setting such as a school is problematic and would not
provide sufficient information on how children in a
particular community are truly developing.
Pathology of the AEDI
reflection

Since the introduction of the AEDI, a number of
communities in Australia have been identified and
placed on the vulnerability continuum. ‘Vulnerable’
in this sense implies the population of Australian
children whose statistical figures are not comparable to
Western-centric norms of child development, which is
theorised in stage and universal developmental tradition
of Piaget (Piaget, 1929) and maturational view of Gesell
(Kincheloe, 2008).
Inappropriate theorising of development, and
assessment procedures that carry a universal view
of child development, position children as deficits
and results in over-representation of ‘at risk’ children
and communities (Ryan & Grieshaber, 2005).
Similarly, Gonzalez-Mena (2008) posits that the use
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of achievement discrepancy models for determining
specific difficulties contributes to the disproportionate
minority representation and leads to categorisation for
special education programs (Gonzalez-Mena, 2008).
The AEDI assumes a universal developmental approach
to child development that considers all children as
developing in the same way and through specific
stages, targeting what children are not doing well rather
than their strengths. A universal view of development
adopts a linear medical–biological model in which child
development is measured only as a verifiable statistic
and thus overlooks the interactive relationships that
occur between the child and his/her social environment
(Bloch, 1991; Burman, 1994; Cannella, 1997; Jipson,

1991; Kessler, 1991; Kincheloe, 2008).
The AEDI assessment tool assumes that all children
develop the measured domains in a similar set of
universal steps following age norms (Piaget, 1929).
This notion regards development as an individualistic
process tailored to a child’s biological clock that is
determined by his/her direct interaction with a separate
space and time. It suggests that children are captives of
biology and science, and being a prisoner of biology and
science implies attaining developmental milestones at
the same age (Daniels, 2001; Loreman, 2007). This
view disregards individualistic culture and celebrates
biological and cultural universality. Aligning to this
concept is to view all children ‘irrespective of context
to follow a standard sequence of biological stages
that constitute a path to full realisation or a ladder-like
progression to maturity’ (Dahlberg et al., 1999, p. 46).
In sharp contrast, in the cultural–historical tradition,
children exist in a context located within the wider
society. They are constitutive of the culture and context
in which they are located (Lee & Johnson, 2007) and
cannot be so separated and measured only in schools.
Vulnerability, which is used to describe communities of
children who fall short of the normative developmental
milestones on the key AEDI variables, constructs
pejorative identities for children and communities. It is
theoretically flawed when articulated through cultural–
historical lenses, as the AEDI currently fails to consider
how children represent and make meaning of the
events that take place outside traditional institutions
such as home, online community and family parties.
The ways that teachers use the knowledge gained
about children in the school setting to supply responses
to the AEDI variables concur with mechanistic views

of development like Piaget and Gesell. Such views
maintain that the world is represented by symbols
that are material in some biological manner and can
be quantified statistically. This is in sharp contrast
to the views held by interpretive psychologists like
Vygotsky, who consider development more in terms
of an interaction between biology and culture and that
development is a very complex phenomenon that cannot
be separated from sociocultural and political context
or situation-specific intentions, moods and meaning
constructions (Kincheloe, 2008, p. 6). In this regard
the notion of child readiness, or how a community of
children are developing, cannot be accomplished by
only studying quantitatively measured behaviour of
groups of individuals in school settings that can then
be generalised universally to communities. The AEDI
approach positions teachers as unitary observers
and assessors who are unlikely to see beyond their
own value positions. As the assessment is relative to
what takes place under the teacher’s gaze, there is a
tendency to overlook the competency level of each child
relative to their sociocultural settings, and to consider
classrooms as the only locales where children exhibit
their developmental traces (Chung & Walsh, 2000).
The AEDI assumes that there is an objective common
stage and culture that all children should attain and
that ‘some pieces of knowledge are essential learning,
being pre-requisites for later success in school and in
life’ (Loreman, 2007, p. 8). Should all children respect,
socialise, eat and communicate in the same way?
Should all communities have their children behaving
in the same way irrespective of the cultural–historical
context of knowing and being human? What about
children from cultures that do not value toys and play?

What about children from cultures that prefer to eat with
other children from the same bowl instead of eating
from individual plates? Would there be something
developmentally ‘wrong’ with those children? All children
have different storylines as a mechanism through
which cultural meanings and cultural ways of being are
preserved, perpetuated and enacted (Postman, 1989).
Thus it is problematic and incoherent when children
from different cultures are measured with European-
centric storylines such as the AEDI. Bruner (1990)
posits that narratives enable people to bring coherence
and identity to otherwise ‘chaotic experience’ (p. 128).
Similarly, Postman (1989) notes that through storylines
we construct theories about how we are constitutive of
the world and how it works.
To a large extent the mechanistic and prescriptive
variables on the AEDI construct the child as the centre
of the world, and development as an idiosyncratic
process that happens through children’s ‘direct
encounters with the world rather than a process
mediated through vicarious encounters with it in
interacting and negotiating with others’ (Bruner, 1986,
p. 85). This means that children must follow the same
biological sequence of development and any deficit
(discrepancy) is viewed as vulnerability (susceptible to
failure). Do teachers have all the cultural lenses through
which to measure children? Whose cultural tools are
being used for the measurement? Does institutional-
based information provide sufficient justification to
put communities into ‘boxes of vulnerability’? On the

contrary, instead of looking for within-child deficits as
evidence of a vulnerability, cultural–historical theory
decentres the child and targets broader and more
contextual sociocultural factors by considering day-
to-day interpersonal and institutional factors that may
impact children’s development (Dahlberg et al., 1999;
Lee & Johnson, 2007; Loreman, 2007; Malaguzzi, 1993;
Vygotsky, 1987).
Children from culturally and linguistically diverse
backgrounds develop and experience their environments
in different and unique ways (Klingner et al., 2005).
Vygotsky argued that failure to acknowledge the
dominant role played by culture on development results
in those who study child development drifting into the
polar camps of behaviourism, stage and universality,
which profoundly compromise knowing about children
(Fleer, 2008; Hedegaard, 2008). A cultural–historical
perspective of development recognises the significance
of the dialectical (interactive) relationship between
individuals and their cultural societies (Hedegaard, 2008).
Cultural–historical theory share[s] a common awareness
of behavior and development as interactive elements
in a fluid and changing interplay (Pence, 1988, p. xxiii).
Importantly, ‘culture, as in social heritage and cultural
tools, is a determinative complement of genotype
that shapes human psychosocial differentiation in the
direction of a given people’s cultural meaning systems’
(Nsamenang, 2008, p. 1). In its critical sense the AEDI
ignores the dialectical processes by which culture and
biology co-construct development (Shweder, 1995),
and the differences in the behavioural characteristics,
intelligences, desirable developmental outcomes and
child status that are valued and promoted by different
peoples in different spaces and times.

Rogoff (2003), studying the cultural nature of
development, posits that the thought of young children
handling knives makes many Western parents quiver,
yet toddlers in parts of Africa safely use machetes.
Similarly, infants in middle-class communities in the
United States are often expected to sleep alone by
the time they are only a few months old, while Mayan
children typically share their mother’s bed through
their toddler years (Rogoff, 2003). Therefore, to
understand how childhood is supported, constrained
and constructed in any community it is important not
to view development progressing linearly, but for it to
be captured by a set of measuring tools at one locality
such as a school.
The very notion of familiar developmental milestones—
such as the ability to sleep independently, walk and read,
and climb stairs at certain ages; share toys, respect
and eat in certain ways—reflects European Australian
middle-class culture (Rogoff, 2003; Shweder, 1995).
This suggests that it is likely that Indigenous, Asian and
African children in Australia will relate differently, share
things differently, socialise differently and thus perform
differently on the AEDI. As their performance may
not meet the expectation of teachers who represent
the Western-dominant middle-class in Australia, their
communities are more likely to receive vulnerability
labels.
It can be argued that the AEDI as a mechanistic
measuring tool demeans the complex nature of
thought and behaviour. Yet thought and behaviour is not
simply a procedure that follows rules and instructions.
They are influenced by numerous cultural, sociopolitical
and economic forces that form human existence

(Hedegaard, 2008). In light of the contribution of culture
to development, I argue that the AEDI, as a psychological
instrument for determining vulnerability of a community
of children, is quite problematic when considered in
terms of the infinite supply of observational contexts
that children traverse. If teachers who rate children
on the AEDI view children’s particular psychological
phenomenon in light of different institutional settings
and cultural contexts they may see children in entirely
new ways. They would recognise that children and
communities positioned as less or more vulnerable are
not true representations of reality. Such communities
or cohorts of children are simply defined without due
consideration to the different values, beliefs, and social
relationships to the political, economic and cultural
climate, and its roles in their lives. The understanding
that child development is ‘a process of participation in
dynamic cultural communities’ (Rogoff, 2003, p. 77)
rejects the deficit model of singularity where children
are measured with others and subjected to vulnerability
categorisations. I argue that the AEDI approach does not
reflect the complexity of child development enshrined
in the cultural–historical tradition. Failure to recognise
this leads to categorisation of children into single cages
of degrees of vulnerability defined by the five colour
codes in AEDI reports.
Alternative progressive view
In contrast to grand developmental stage theories, a
cultural–historical perspective of child development
is taking root (see, for example, Daniels, 2001; Fleer,
2008, Hedegaard, 2008, Rogoff, 2003). In this view
child development is considered more as ‘dynamic
interactions people experience with the specific
characteristics of the changing cultural contexts within

which they are embedded’ (Lerner, 1998, p. 16). Viewing
child development as a cultural–historical exercise is to
perceive children as developing in ‘the multiple and
integrated levels of organisation’ (Lerner 1998, p. 2)
such as family, church, community centre, school and
online community. Such conceptualisation enables
us to recognise children’s identity and reconstructs
them from ‘vulnerable’ individuals to promising and
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competent individuals who are developing in relation to
their cultural contexts in time and space. This is possible
when cultures provide opportunities for all children and
allow the full participation in appropriate cultural and
social activities. This approach offers us the opportunity
to interrogate dialectically the developmental processes
as a consequence of institutional collective function
rather than describing children’s development solely from
a classroom point of view (Daniels, 2001; Hedegaard,
2008; Lerner, 1998; Ryan & Grieshaber, 2005). It means
that we perceive development as being influenced by
both biology and culture in an interactive way. When
viewed from a cultural–historical point of view, culture is
the most significant system within which development
occurs (Lee & Walsh, 2001). Building on Vygotsky’s
work, Bruner (1986) emphasises that knowing how
best children are developing cannot be separated from
the cultural contexts in which the individual child is
located. He reiterated that development cannot be free
from culture and that:
A culture free theoretical position is not a wrong

claim, but an absurd one as the plasticity of the
human genome is such that there is no unique way
in which it is realised, no way that is independent of
opportunities provided by the culture into which an
individual is born. (Bruner, 1986, p. 135)
For us to understand this very position, it is important
to conceptualise culture and the social as situated.
Shweder et al. (1998) perceive culture as the
‘custom complex’ that honours both the ‘symbolic
and behavioural inheritances’ (p. 867). The handed-
down traditions, ways of knowing, and tacit and overt
characteristics, represent the symbolic inheritance or
cultural community; whereas the routines established
by family and social traditions represent behavioural
inheritance. The implication is that cultural–historical
theory pays attention to the thinking and acting
processes of individuals within a cultural group. Rogoff
(2003) advises that perceiving culture as a body with
a clear-cut boundary is misleading and unhelpful, since
its boundary extends beyond nationality, race, ethnicity
and socioeconomic class, which often functions as
‘“social address” boxes or identity categories’ (p. 78).
Perceiving children as members of a cultural community
implies that we recognise them as members who co-
construct a shared reality and not as deficit players with
deviations that need to be fixed (Shweder, 1996). The
AEDI, however, equates culture with superficial aspects
of the cultural community, such as food, clothing and
respect. Rogoff (2003) argued that this view of culture
‘creates issues of variability within groups, overlapping
involvements in different communities, and the
complexities of subdividing categorisation systems’
(p. 78). Analysis of what the AEDI explores about
children does not reflect the complexity of children’s

cultural identities and the way they develop. We need
to recognise that culture is more than just a bundle
of traits. It is composed of shared values and moral
principles. Because the AEDI adheres to a traditional
conception of development, as discussed earlier in this
paper, it over-generalises children within their cultural
community and provides little information about how
they are developing relative to other settings in which
they traverse.
Moving from disempowerment to
empowerment
Although the current purpose of the AEDI is to enable
communities to support their children to be ‘better’
ready for school, its philosophical underpinning
disempowers the child. Some form of child constructions
can empower or disempower children. The cultural–
historical approach deals with the thinking processes,
ways of knowing, values and ethos that help sustain
a community’s continual existence and development
(Shweder et al. 1998), those who ascribe to this
tradition perceive children as competent—they have
their individual capabilities that make them researchers
and discoverers of knowledge. The child developing in
culture does not mean culture engulfs the universal
child; it empowers and complements the development
of the child. It facilitates and provides the compass for
the individual child to participate appropriately in his/
her cultural community. Since the cultural–historical
perspective of development is mutually constitutive,
cultural changes shape the individual and they in turn
shape their cultural settings and community relations.
Thus Vygotsky’s cultural–historical theory positions the
child as historical, rejects the external and perceives child

development as situated within time and space. This
notion is supported by Rogoff (2003) who has indicated
that, in the cultural–historical tradition, development is
best understood by examining the interactive systems
within everyday cultural life. Institutions change over
time, as do the interactive elements within culture. It is
not therefore helpful to see culture as historically static
or development of children as regulated within rigid
stages. Seeing it in this way robs the individual child of
power and identity.
On the social competence and wellbeing domain for
instance, the AEDI seeks information about children
such as: ‘Child plays, gets along with others and
shares, and is self-confident’. These items disconnect
extensively from the sociocultural perspective and
are heavily connected to Piaget’s egocentric child,
which conjures a negative image of children as
unsociable, selfish and self-centred, who are not able
to share with others (Loreman, 2007). If children are
constructed as vulnerable through the administration of
a single quantitative instrument, they are positioned as
powerless because it reflects a narrowly focused child
development, and defines children’s cultural community
only in terms with their connection with teachers and
schooling. It does not consider the extended sense
of community relations and how it is constitutive of
child development (Lee & Walsh, 2004). It shows that
development is occurring passively, influenced by only
genetics (Kincheloe, 2008). Since individuals who are
constructed as vulnerable suffer the often debilitating

consequences of their construction (Persuade, 2000)
and become further marginalised, we need to empower
them by recognising them as active constituents in
multiple — rather than single — cultural communities,
which often have competing practices and values.
This requires a significant shift in concept beyond
universal notions of child development in which
dominant theoretical perspectives of child development
become deep-seated folk psychologies (Bruner, 1996).
Folk psychologies induce us to design and assess child
development on folk assumptions. Bruner argues that,
‘just as we are steered in ordinary interaction by our
folk psychology, so we are steered in the activity of
helping children learn about the world by notions of folk
pedagogy’ (p. 46); notions which are the taken taken-
for-granted practices that emanate from intensely
entrenched cultural philosophy about how children
develop and gain knowledge (Lee & Walsh, 2004). The
AEDI, like all other measuring instruments, needs to be
challenged and problematised, but only after it is first
understood and respected.
Conclusion
This article has argued that the AEDI has been
constructed in last century’s grand universal theories of
child development, which are inclined to developmental
milestones and maturational perspectives in the
Piagetian and Gesellian traditions. From this paper I
posit that the AEDI measures Piaget’s child because
it does not consider the centrality of cultural–historical
theory in children’s development (Vygotsky, 1987).
Perceiving and measuring child development from a
cultural–historical approach considers a more extensive
and responsive way through which they develop more-

complex imaginations and behavioural characteristics,
and does not impose or force children to measure up
to dominant assessment tools that are designed in
grand universal theories. Through multiple lenses we
can study the co-creation of human beings and cultures
by focusing on both mentalities and practices, and both
culture and biology. Development is a moving target,
a shape-shifting target. The diverse range of settings
that children encounter brings to presence an out-there
that is multiple, shifting and non-coherent. Trajectories
of development children imagine and enacted in one
setting would be inconsistent with trajectories enacted
in another setting. Development, therefore, cannot be
summed up in one short assessment. If we want to
move away from measuring Piaget’s child, then we
need to develop assessment tools based on multiple
psychological perspectives (Shweder et al., 1998). Also,
as it is possible that teachers who rate children on the
AEDI are likely to be influenced by the kind and form
of knowledge they have, it is important to connect
teachers with alternative theories of child development
that promise a broader view of children. For those
designing assessment tools for measuring how
children are developing, new conceptual and theoretical
understandings about development will need to be
examined in light of contextual understandings and
practices, and with regard to how those understandings
might be interpreted and applied in their particular
environment and communities.
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Markus,
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(Eds.), N. Minick (Trans.) New York: Plenum Press.
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sChOLArshIP

This Scholarship fund was established by the Kindergarten
Union of South Australia in 1977 and is now administered by
the
Jean Denton & Lillian de Lissa Scholarships Committee and the
Public Trustee.
Applicants are invited for the Jean Denton Memorial
Scholarship. The purpose of the scholarship is to advance
knowledge in early childhood education. The scholarship is
available to any Australian citizen(s) working in Australia.
The scholarship is for postgraduate studies or advanced
research either within or outside Australia, the purpose or the
benefit of which will be applied in the early childhood area
within
Australia. The scholarship is granted for a one year period.
APPLICATIONS MUST BE MADE
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Enquiries and application form requests can be directed
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Scenario
Scenario Summary
An exercise in “Emergency Planning”
You are a recent college graduate and have been working with
the most successful planning firm in Portland, Oregon for the
past 12 months. You have assisted with dozens of events and are
now excited to lead your first large event. It is three days until
your event, the second annual Women’s Day Conference. The
local medical school, Oregon Health Sciences University, is
hosting the day-long conference in Portland, Oregon at the
Portland Oregon Convention Center. Each attendee is paying
$100 to receive a fun day of advice on women’s health, a
catered box lunch, a health expo, and break-out sessions that
vary from yoga to nutrition while undergoing cancer treatments.
The event was well received last year and has received a lot of
press. The University is excited by the press and since most of
the labor and items are donated this is a large fund raiser for
their operations.
Your Assignment
This morning you were notified by your assistant that the web
registration did not automatically close as expected which led to
8,000 paid registrations being processed and confirmed. The
capacity of the Convention Center is 7,000 given the
arrangements for the trade show, theater seating, and break-out
session rooms.
K E Y P L A Y E R S
Peggy Frank
Your boss at the event planning firm
This is an important client for us as we plan dozens of events
for the University each year and this event is high profile in the

community. Just fix it.
Jennifer Dunn
Convention & Visitor Planning Event Coordinator
We can hold up to 10,000 guests if we reconfigure the set-up.
It’s a lot of work but it can be done... If the catering company
can get more box lunches together. If security can find a few
more people to work... If we can rent more chairs... If we can
contract with another parking lot... If... There are a lot of
things to change.
Bill Smith-Primary Stakeholder
OHSU Women’s Center Vice President
I’m excited about the high response. I wouldn’t worry about
the capacity. We’ll have no-shows, some people come late,
some people leave early. Not everyone wants a box lunch
anyway. I’m thrilled we can help so many women and I hope
they bring their friends with them.
Activity
You Decide...
Assignment Requirements:
1. What do you do? You have a legal, ethical, and financial
responsibility to make certain the event and its operations
maintain the highest standards of safety possible. You have a
responsibility to protect the brand and quality of your meeting
planning firm, and you have a responsibility to maximize the
happiness and revenue for your client. What will you do?
2. Often the number of guests is unknown for events. Weather
can keep people away or bring them out in large numbers. How
do you plan for unknown guest counts? What would have been
included in contingency planned for this type of event?
Responses to each question should be approximately 200- 300
words in length .
Note to the student: You are being graded on your
demonstration of reasoning, critical thinking, and analytical
abilities in applying what you are learning. If you use your text
or outside sources of information, please provide in-text
citations and references using APA or MLA formatting.

Grading Rubric:
Category
Points
Description
Understanding
15
Demonstrate a strong grasp of the problem at hand. Demonstrate
understanding of how the course concepts apply to the problem.
Analysis
15
Apply original thought to solving the business problem. Apply
concepts from the course material correctly toward solving the
business problem.
Execution
5
Write your answer clearly and succinctly using strong
organization and proper grammar. Use citations correctly.
Total
35
A quality paper will meet or exceed all of the above
requirements.
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.
KEY WORDS: assessment, toddlers, pragmatics, screening,
preschool children
A lthough definitions of pragmatics vary considerably, most
defini-tions focus on our ability to use language effectively and
appro-priately in social interactions with other people (Bates,
1976).
Pragmatics is commonly regarded as the third major component

of lan-
guage ability in addition to knowledge of form (phonology and
syntax) and
content (semantics) (Ninio & Snow, 1996), although its precise
relation
to these other aspects is of some debate (Levinson, 1983). This
article
describes a newly developed parent-report measure of early
pragmatic
language development, the Language Use Inventory for Young
Children
(LUI; O’Neill, 2002) and presents evidence of its internal
reliability and
discriminant validity.
Pragmatic Development in Children Under 4 Years of Age
Researchers studying young children’s pragmatic development
have
focused on a wide range of topics and ages. Longitudinal
studies that have
Daniela K. O’Neill
University of Waterloo, Waterloo,
Ontario, Canada
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol. 50 •
214–228 • February 2007 • D American Speech-Language-
Hearing Association
1092-4388/07/5001-0214
214

concentrated on children’s earliest gestural and verbal
communicative intents have demonstrated that children
begin as early as 9 to 10 months of age to use their ges-
tures and vocalizations for such pragmatic functions as
requesting, labeling, answering, greeting, and protest-
ing (Bates, Camaioni, & Volterra, 1975; Dale, 1980). By
2 years of age, as revealed in a longitudinal study inves-
tigating the order of emergence of more than 100 com-
municative acts in mother–child conversation (Ninio &
Snow, 1996), children have mastered most of the basic,
central communicative uses of speech such as the ability
to discuss various topics and negotiate action (e.g., asking
wh- questions, discussions of the nonpresent, requesting/
proposing new activity).
Beyond the ageof 2 years, pragmaticabilities studied
include children’s mastery of rules of politeness, deictic
forms, and indirect forms of speech; the development of
conversational skills (e.g., turn taking, topic initiation,
contingent responding); the adaptation of utterances to
the background knowledge of participants in the conver-
sation; the production of extended discourse and mas-
tery of different styles and registers of speech tailored to
specific social roles and social circumstances; and nar-
rative development. Children’s pragmatic language abil-
ities have been demonstrated to rapidly increase and
become more sophisticated during the preschool years,
with 4-year-olds, for example, tailoring their utterances
to knowledge of a listener and to a listener’s age, status,
and gender (for review, see Clark, 2003). A chronology
of the order of acquisition (e.g., month-by-month) of
these more sophisticated pragmatic abilities is, however,
not available, given that children in these studies were
observed at only a few age points. One aim of the LUI is
to provide a more detailed picture of the order of emer-
gence of pragmatic language abilities from 18 to 47 months

of age.
Need for a Measure to Assess Pragmatic
Language Development in Toddlers
and Preschoolers
No standardized test (observational or stand-alone
parent report) is currently available that is specifically
designed to assess toddlers’ and preschool children’s (i.e.,
under age 4 years) pragmatic language competence. The
need for such a standardized tool is becoming more urgent
as clinicians and researchers aim for earlier identification
and diagnosis of language and developmental disorders.
Governments are also increasingly enacting legislation
requiring that children with communication disorders
be identified before entering school (Kerr, Guildford, &
Bird, 2003; Nuttall, Romero, & Kalesnik, 1999). More-
over, standardized testing is essential, and often legally
required, to document a deficit to qualify a child for edu-
cational and social services (Paul, 2001).
With respect to existing measures for assessing prag-
matic language competence suitable for very young chil-
dren, the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales
(CSBS; Wetherby & Prizant, 1993) are regarded as the
closest measure to meet this need (Mervis & Robinson,
2005), although the CSBS does not provide an overall score
of pragmatic functioning. The CSBS is also quite time-
consuming to administer, although a shorter version for
use with children 6–24 months of age has recently been
developed (i.e., the Communication and Symbolic Behav-
ior Scales Developmental Profile [CSBS DP]; Wetherby &
Prizant, 2002). (Two other measures of pragmatics, the
Pragmatics Protocol [Prutting & Kirchner, 1983] and the
Children’s Communication Checklist–2 [CCC-2; Bishop,
1998, 2003] are designed for children older than age 4. The

CCC-2 is a standardized caregiver checklist. The Pragmat-
ics Protocol is clinician-scored based on a conversational
sample and is not standardized. A Pragmatics Profile
subtest is included in the most recent edition of the Clin-
ical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals–Preschool
[CELF-P-2; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2004], but only pro-
vides cutoff points at 6-month age intervals.)
The few standardized tests available to assess lan-
guage abilitiesin children under 5years of age focuslargely
on semantic (vocabulary) and grammatical skills and not
pragmatics (e.g., the MacArthur Communicative Develop-
ment Inventories [M-CDI]; Fenson et al., 1993; the Lan-
guage Development Survey [LDS]; Rescorla, 1989; the
PreschoolLanguageScale–3[PLS-3];Zimmerman, Steiner,
& Pond, 1992; and the CELF-P-2; Semel et al., 2004;
for review, see Hirsh-Pasek, Kochanoff, Newcombe, &
de Villiers, 2005). Other tools that have been developed to as-
sess communication more broadly (e.g., Girolametto, 1997;
Hadley & Rice, 1993; Haley, Coster, Ludlow, Haltiwanger,
& Andrellos, 1992) have not yet been validated with large
samples (McCauley, 2001). This situation has led many
researchers to identify an urgent need for reliable, valid,
and standardized measures to assess early pragmatic lan-
guage competence (McCardle, Cooper, & Freund, 2005).
The provision of measures that specifically target
pragmatic language development has become more im-
portant with the recognition that, for some children, com-
municative impairment is found primarily at the level of
pragmatics rather than vocabulary orgrammatical acqui-
sition (e.g., Adams & Bishop, 1989). It is well-recognized
that pragmatic language impairment (Bishop, 1998) oc-
curs among individuals with pervasive developmental
disorders(Baron-Cohen,1988),butdisproportionateprag-
maticdifficultiesnotaccompaniedbyanyautisticsymptom-

atology have also been found in other clinical groups (Rice,
Warren, & Betz, 2005), including individuals with specific
language impairment (Botting & Conti-Ramsden, 1999),
hyperlexia (Healy, 1982), fragile X syndrome and Down
syndrome (Abbeduto & Murphy, 2004), and neurodevel-
opmental disorders (Levy, Tennebaum, & Orney, 2000).
O’Neill: The Language Use Inventory 215
Use of Parent Report
With respect to assessing language competence in
younger children, and especially pragmatic competence,
structured tests have been criticized as providing only
a limited picture of the richness and complexity of the
child’s communicative behavior and revealing little about
the child’s language as it occurs and is used in everyday
communication (Leonard, Prutting, Perozzi, & Berkeley,
1978; Owens, 1995). Greater ecological validity has been
argued to be possessed by informal or naturalistic assess-
ment methods (Lund & Duchan, 1983).
One answer to concerns about the ecological validity
of structured tests has been the use of standardized
parent-report measures. Parent report is now a compo-
nent of many widely used developmental and language
screeningtools and structured assessments (e.g., the Ages
and Stages Questionnaire; Bricker & Squires, 1999; the
Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Test; Bzoch &
League, 1971; the Denver Developmental Screening Test;
Frankenburg, Dodds, Fandal, Kazuk, & Cohrs, 1975; the
CELF-P-2; Semel et al., 2004; the Sequenced Inventory
of Communicative Development; Hedrick, Prather, &
Tobin, 1984; the LDS; Rescorla, 1989; the Rossetti Infant-

Toddler Language Scale; Rossetti, 1990; and the CSBS;
Wetherby&Prizant,1993).Inaddition,theM-CDI(Fenson
et al., 1993), which assesses lexical, gestural, and gram-
matical development (but not pragmatics) among children
8–30 months of age, relies entirely on parental report.
Parent report has been demonstrated to be accurate, valid,
and reliable, particularly when assessment is limited to
current and emergent behaviors and a recognition format
is used (Fenson et al., 1993). As will be shown, the LUI
satisfies these conditions. With respect to assessing prag-
matic language competence, parent report is especially
promising given that parents observe their children’s lan-
guage in a wide variety of settings, a condition that would
be very difficult to mimic using structured testing. Stan-
dardized parent-report measures can also provide a cost-
effective means of screening and evaluating children.
Development of the Initial Items on the LUI
The LUI (O’Neill, 2002) used in the two studies re-
ported in this article represents the fourth version of the
questionnaire formerly known as the Pragmatics Apti-
tude Test.1 The 338 items on the original version (O’Neill
& Baron-Cohen, 1996) were developed following a re-
view by O’Neill of the literature on typical and nontyp-
ical language development. In identifying pragmatic
competencies to include on the questionnaire, the ap-
proach adopted was not to isolate and classify specific
speech acts (e.g., assertives, directives, etc.; Searle, 1969),
an approach that has also been found to be too limited by
other researchers (e.g., Prutting & Kirchner, 1983, 1987).
Rather, the approach was similar to more recent ap-
proaches emphasizing “the functioning of language in
actual contexts of use” (Verschueren, 1999, p. 9) and the
capturing of “discrete, psychologically real types of com-

municative acts” occurring in children’s interactions with
other people (Ninio & Snow, 1996, p. 21).
And most important, the focus was on identifying de-
velopments in children’s language use (note that language
use is used synonymously with pragmatic competence) in-
fluenced by their developing understanding of the mind
(O’Neill, 2005)—that is, their understanding of their own
and other people’s behaviors, mental states, and differing
perspectives (i.e., theory of mind; Astington, Harris, &
Olson, 1988). This approach is consistent with views of
pragmatics that stress the importance of “understand-
ing intentional human action” (Green, 1989, p. 2) and
“understanding the interlocuter’s state of mind” (Ninio
& Snow, 1996, p. 191) in communication. Thus, based on
the findings of studies investigating children’s devel-
oping understanding of mind, items were developed to
capture, for example, young children’s ability to direct
someone’s attention, to talk or ask about people’s behav-
iors and mental states, to tease, and to take a listener’s
knowledge into account. The firm grounding of the con-
tent of the items in established research findings was
intended to ensure the LUI’s content validity (Anastasi,
1988) and meets current calls for assessment tools with
greater “empirical validity” (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2005).
Preliminary Studies of the LUI’s
Internal Reliability
Two preliminary studies of the LUI’s internal reli-
ability were conducted primarily to shorten the question-
naire from its original 338 items to permit completion
within 30 min and develop subscales with acceptable
levels of reliability. Corrected-item total calculation (CITC)
scores and Cronbach’s coefficient alpha values (Cronbach,
1984) were used to decide whether to retain or delete

items. A minimum coefficient level of .3 was generally
used in interpreting the CITC scores (Anastasi, 1988).
Alpha values over .80 were deemed acceptable in accor-
dance with recommendations of assessment researchers
(Salvia & Ysseldyke, 2001),
In the first study, the questionnaire was completed
by 183 parents of children between the ages of 13 and
48 months (48% girls, 52% boys; in six 6-month age
groups) recruited from the University of Waterloo’s Cen-
tre for Child Studies database. Item analysis led to
the deletion of 132 items. The initial alpha values for
the 15 subscales computed on the 206 remaining items
1In 2002, the name of the questionnaire was changed from the
Pragmatics
Aptitude Test to the Language Use Inventory for Young
Children: An assess-
ment of pragmatic language development. This renaming
highlighted the
term language use, which is more familiar to parents than
pragmatics, and
therefore better describes the questionnaire’s nature and content
to them. As the
questionnaire is not a “test” per se, the term inventory is also
more appropriate.
216 Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research • Vol.
50 • 214–228 • February 2007
were encouraging, with 10 subscales demonstrating
high internal consistency (as of .80 to .98). To address
the lower reliabilities of 5 of the subscales, 26 new items
were added (following further review of the literature).

Following this first study, the lowest appropriate age
for the questionnaire was increased to 18 months from
13 months as parents responded “no” to most items
before 18 months.
In a second study, this second version of the ques-
tionnaire (O’Neill, 1999) with 232 items was completed
by 161 parents of children (52% girls, 48% boys) between
the ages of 18 and 47 months recruited as in the first study.
Item analysis led to the deletion of a further 55 items.
Alpha values computed on the 177 remaining items re-
vealed that theinternal consistency of thequestionnaire’s
12 scored subscales had improved: 8 subscales had alpha
values in the range of .90 to .98, 3 had values of .89 and
.80,andonehadavalueof .74.Threenew itemswereadded
to the questionnaire, resulting in a total of 180 items. At
this time, to increase the ease of use of the question-
naire, two other modifications were made: (a) items were
reworded to eliminate any need for reverse scoring, and
(b) questions and instructions were reworded based on
readability analyses (Gunning, 1952; Kinkaid, Fishburne,
Rogers,& Chissom,1975) to require less than the8th grade
reading ability often advocated for public health informa-
tion (National Work Group on Literacy and Health, 1998).
Two gesture subscales demonstrating a linear decrease
in their scores with age (as would be expected if children
are replacing these gestures with words) were consid-
ered for deletion, but were ultimately retained so that a
parent of a child with very low levels of language use
would not have to indicate negative responses from the
beginning.
The third version of the LUI resulting from these
preliminary studies (O’Neill, 2001) was then the subject
of two studies to be presented in this article. Study 1
examined its internal and test–retest reliability. Study 2

examined the ability of the LUI to distinguish between
children whose language was developing typically and
children who subsequently received a diagnosis confirm-
ing the presence of language delay.
Study 1
The goal of Study 1 was to evaluate the internal re-
liability of the LUI and assess its test–retest reliability
(i.e., the extent to which scores remain stable across two
or more administrations). With respect to test–retest
reliability, given the rapidity with which language skills
can change over short periods of time and uneven rates
of language change, one would not expect high stability.
However, within a period of a few weeks, one might ex-
pect to see stability. In keeping with time periods used in
other similar test–retest reliability studies, parents com-
pleted a second questionnaire within 4 weeks of comple-
tion of the initial questionnaire.
Method
Materials
The 180-item version of the LUI resulting from the
preliminary reliability studies was used. Table 1 provides
a description of its main three parts, its 14 subscales, and
sample items. A yes or no response was required for 89%
of theitems, and the remaining 11% presented theoptions
never, rarely, sometimes, or often (the option not anymore
was also presented in Gesture Subscale A).
In addition to the LUI, parents provided information
pertaining to birth order and the presence of major health
or speech problems using a form similar to that used by
Fenson et al. (1993). However, an additional new form

was developed to assess exposure to other languages.
Parents were asked to indicate all adult persons with
whom the child regularly interacts, the language(s) spoken
by the person, the percentage of time the person speaks
one or more languages, and the number of hours per week
the child typically spends with the person. Given the sub-
stantial percentage of children exposed to other languages
at home (12%–15% of children under 4 years according
to Statistics Canada, 2001), the inclusion of solely mono-
lingual English speaking children was not merited. Ex-
posure to a second language for less than 20% of the child’s
waking hours is generally agreed not to lead to substan-
tial language growth in that second language and such
children are not generally considered as bilingual (e.g.,
Pearson, Fernandez, Lewedeg, & Oller, 1997). Thus, expo-
sure to a second language exceeding 20% of waking hours
was established as the threshold for exclusion.
Itshould also be noted that in householdswhere more
than one language is spoken, asking parents to report
on the questionnaire as “yes” only the particular items
performed in English as opposed to a second language
would impose an artificial distinction that would place
an unnecessary demand on parents, especially given
that it has been documented that bilingual speakers
are not always aware of the language they are speaking
(Goodz, 1989) and bilingual families often do not adopt
a “one-parent one-language” strategy (Pearson et al.,
1997). For these reasons, in the information letter accom-
panying the questionnaire, if a child was exposed to a
language(s) other than English, parents were instructed
to check an item as “yes” if the child produced the words
or utterances asked about “either in English or in the
other language(s) he/she was exposed to.”
Participants and Procedure

Time 1. Parents were recruited from the UW Centre
for Child Studies database. Thequestionnaire was mailed
to 207 parents of children between the ages of 18 and
47 months. This age range was divided into 5 six-month
intervals(18–23,24–29,30–35,36–41,and42–47months).
At the time of the initial call, parents were also asked if
they would be willing to complete the questionnaire twice.
One hundred ninety-two (93%) of the questionnaires were
returned. Fifteen (8%) were dropped for the following
reasons: missing data (8), medical reasons (2), second lan-
guage exposure over 20% of waking hours (2), prematurity
exceeding 2 weeks (1), and age older than 47 months (1).
This resulted in a final sample size of 177 (see Table 2 for
sample characteristics). All the children had acquired
Table 1. Overview of the content of the three major parts and 14
subscales of the Language Use Inventory for Young Children
(LUI; O’Neill,
2001, 2002).
Part and subscale Content description of subscale and
abbreviated version of sample items
Part 1: How your child communicates with gestures
A: How your child uses gestures to ask for something The
child’s imperative use of gestures.
e.g., lifts arms to be carried; points to something wanted

B: How your child uses gestures to get you to notice something
The child’s declarative use of gestures.
e.g., points to something of interest; shows you something of
interest
Part 2: Your child’s communication with words
C: Types of words your child uses The topic and typicality of
the child’s first words.
e.g., use of animal terms; use of “gone”
D: Your child’s requests for help The child’s imperative use of
words.
e.g., use of “help”; requests for help with difficult task
E: Your child’s interests The topic and typicality of the child’s
interests.
e.g., three favourite play activities
Part 3: Your child’s longer sentences
F: How your child uses words to get you to notice something
The child’s declarative use of words.
e.g., asks you to “look!”; says “guess what?”
G: Your child’s questions and comments about things The
child’s ability to use language to comment or gain information
about things.
e.g., asks what something is; asks who something belongs to
H: Your child’s questions and comments about themselves
or other people
The child’s ability to use language to comment and/or gain
information about people.

e.g., asks where someone is; says how he/she feels emotionally
I: Your child’s use of words in activities with others The child’s
ability to regulate the actions of other people through language.
e.g., tells another person to stop doing something; asks for a
turn
J: Teasing and your child’s sense of humour The child’s ability
to tease via nonverbal and verbal means.
e.g., says wrong things in a teasing way; tells jokes
K: Your child’s interest in words and language The child’s
ability to incorporate knowledge of words/language
into everyday situations/activities.
e.g., imitates words heard; asks about the meaning of new words
L: Your child’s interests when talking The topic and typicality
of the child’s language use.
e.g., three things talked about most
M: How your child adapts conversation to other people The
child’s ability to signal comprehension and miscomprehension
and
take the perspective of another person in early conversational
narratives.
e.g., use of “what?”; clarification questions such as “This one?”
N: How your child is building longer sentences and stories The
child’s more sophisticated discourse and narrative skills (e.g.,
use of
connectives, modals, mental state terms, time indicator).
e.g., use of “next,” “maybe,” “think,” “tomorrow”

Note. In the LUI, the specific items in each subscale are
preceded by a main question (e.g., for Subscale H: Which of the
following things have you
heard your child talk about? Following this, a list of items is
presented and many of these items are accompanied by an
example(s) to aid parents
in understanding the question (e.g., for Subscale H: Item a:
Where someone else is [e.g., Where’s Daddy?; Mommy’s here.];
Item b: What he/she is going
to do [e.g., I’m gonna draw a house.] etc.). The sample items
provided have been abbreviated given space limitations.
50 • 214–228 • February 2007
English as their first language, although 13.4% were
reported to be exposed to a second language in the
home for less than 20% of their waking hours (including
French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Turkish,
Slovenian, Hungarian, Romanian, Slovakian, Croatian,
Vietnamese, and Cantonese).
Time 2. Of the final 177 participants, 175 had indi-
cated a willingness to complete the questionnaire twice
and, so, when the questionnaire was returned to the lab,
a second was mailed with instructions to complete it
within 4 weeks of initial completion of the Time 1 question-
naire. One hundred fifty-eight (90%) of these questionnaires
were returned. Of these, 17 (11%) were dropped for the
following reasons: missing data (5), subsequently being
dropped at Time 1 (11), and responding beyond the 4-week
time window (1). Thus, a final total of 141 questionnaires
were used in the test–retest sample (see Table 2 for sam-

ple characteristics).
Scoring. A child’s total score was calculated from the
sum of all items in the subscales of Parts 2 and 3 (i.e., it
did not include the two gesture scales in Part 1). Re-
sponses of yes, sometimes, and often were scored as 1 and
never and rarely as 0.
Results and Discussion
Completion Time
Based on parent report, the mean time to complete
Parts 1 to 3 of the questionnaire was 27 min, with a
range from 22 to 35 min.
Internal Reliability
Item analysis suggested only the reassignment of
1 of the 180 items to a different subscale. Following its
reassignment, coefficient alpha values were computed
for all three parts of the inventory and all subscales. The
resulting alpha values are shown in Table 3 and very
strongly confirm the internal consistency and reliability
of the LUI. The coefficient alpha values of each of the
three parts and 7 of the 12 scored subscales met the
clinically most desirable level of .9 or above. The alpha
value for Parts 2 and 3 combined, which comprises a child’s
total score on the LUI, was .99 (N = 161, SEM = 3.96).
Table 3. Values for Cronbach’s alpha for all parts and subscales
of the Language Use Inventory for Young
Children (Study1).
Alpha (SEM) # of items
Part 1: How your child communicates with gestures .91 (1.26)

13
A: How your child uses gestures to ask for something .92 (1.14)
11
B: How your child uses gestures to get you to notice something
.55 (0.32) 2
Part 2: Your child’s communication with words .95 (1.08) 28
C: Types of word’s your child uses .93 (0.90) 21
D: Your child’s requests for help .87 (0.56) 7
E: Your child’s interests Not scored 2
Part 3: Your child’s longer sentences .99 (3.81) 133
F: How your child uses words to get you to notice something
.83 (0.65) 6
G: Your child’s questions and comments about things .91 (0.79)
9
H: Your child’s questions and comments about themselves/other
people .98 (1.76) 36
I: Your child’s use of words in activities with others .94 (0.94)
14
J: Teasing and your child’s sense of humour .80 (0.81) 5
K: Your child’s interest in words and language .86 (1.19) 12
L: Your child’s interests when talking Not scored 4
M: How your child adapts conversation to other people .93
(1.26) 15
N: How your child is building longer sentences and stories .98
(1.88) 36
Table 2. Descriptive characteristics of the Time 1 and Time 2
test–retest
participants (Study 1).
Age group (months) N Mean age (months) % girls / boys
Time 1 participants

1. 18–23 34 20.4 53 / 47
2. 24–29 38 25.5 53 / 47
3. 30–35 39 32.6 49 / 51
4. 36–41 33 38.4 54 / 46
5. 42–47 33 44.3 58 / 42
Total 177 53 / 47
Time 2 participants (test–retest)
1. 18–23 31 20.2 55 / 45
2. 24–29 25 25.4 48 / 52
3. 30–35 30 32.4 50 / 50
4. 36–41 27 38.4 48 / 52
5. 42–47 28 44.4 64 / 36
Total 141 53 / 47
Figure 1. The mean proportion (with 95% confidence interval)
of items scored positively on each of the 12 scored subscales
shown separately for
boys and girls in each of the five age groups.
Continued
50 • 214–228 • February 2007
The alpha values forallremaining subscales exceptB were
all at or above acceptable levels of .80 to .87. Subscale B’s

low alpha value (.55) was unexpected given that with the
same items in the previous study the alpha value had been
.74. One reason for this lack of stability may be the lower
number of items in this scale and the fact that children in
all age groups scored close to ceiling.
Factor Analysis
An exploratory factor analysis with varimax rota-
tion supported a two-factor solution, with the first factor
corresponding to the 10 subscales of Parts 2 and 3 as-
sessing verbal communication (eigenvalue = 8.34) and a
second factor corresponding to the 2 gesture subscales in
Part 1 (eigenvalue = 1.1). No subscales overlapped in
their loadings, and all loadings for the first factor were
greater than .78. The two factors accounted, respectively,
for 69.5% and 9.2% of the variance explained, for a total of
78.7%. The finding that all the subscales in Parts 2 and 3
loaded onto one factor was not contrary to expectation. As
will also be evident from the results of the age analyses
and test–retest study to follow, the very rapid growth of
these abilities in tandem with each other suggests a fair
amount of overlap in the development of these abilities
in time. The fact that these subscales load onto one
factor with a typically developing group of children also
does not preclude the possibility that different results
might be found with subpopulations of children with
language impairment.
Growth With Age Across Subscales
For each subscale, to examine children’s growth in
pragmatic competence with age, a 5 (age groups) × 2 (sex)
analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted on the
summed scores for each subscale. A significant main

effect of age (p < .05) was observed for all subscales.
Figure 1 shows the performance of each age group, and
sex within each age group, on each subscale. As is evident
in this figure, children’s scores increased linearly with
age for all subscales in Parts 2 and 3 assessing verbal
language use. In contrast, for two gesture subscales in
Part 1, children’s scores decreased with age, reflecting
children’s replacement of these early gestures with
verbal forms.
Results of Tukey’s post hoc tests identified which
of the five age groups differed significantly in their
Figure 1 (continued).
performance on each subscale (see summary in Table 4).
The results clearly show the early, rapid growth in pragmatic
language competence, especially with respect to the uses
of language assessed by the subscales of Parts 2 and 3.
For example, as summarized in Table 4, and as can be
observed in Figure 1, the 24–29-month age group and all
older groups were already showing significantly higher
scores on all subscales in Parts 2 and 3 than the youngest
age group (18–23 months). In addition, on all subscales
in Part 3, the 30–35-month age group and all older age
groups had scores significantly higher than the younger
two age groups (18–24 and 25–29 months). Finally, only
the two oldest age groups (36–42 and 43–47 months)
scored significantly higher on the last four subscales of
Part 3 (J through N) than all three younger age groups.
Overall, these findings suggest that the goal of the LUI

to capture early developments in pragmatic language
competence—ideally under age 4 to increase the useful-
ness of the LUI as a means of screening and evaluating
toddlers and preschool children—was met.
Sex Differences
Whether sex differences in the rate of language de-
velopment exist is of considerable research and applied
interest. Recent reviews suggest the performance of girls
is often significantly higher than that of boys on general
and specific tests of language development administered
before age 7 (Bornstein, Hahn, & Haynes, 2005). In the
current study, however, significant sex differences ( p < .05)
were rare and isolated. They were found only for two
subscales: F, which assesses declarative use of words,
and N, which assesses word use as children are building
longer sentences and stories. Moreover, for both these
subscales, the Sex × Age Group interaction was not sig-
nificant, indicating the sex difference was not observed
at all age groups. The findings of a much larger ongoing
standardization study will determine more accurately
whether sex differences exist with respect to children’s
scores on the subscales of the LUI.
Intercorrelations Among the Subscales
Table5showstheintercorrelationsamongall12scored
subscales, controlling forage (in months).Children’s scores
on both gesture subscales (A: Imperative Gestures and
B: Declarative Gestures) were significantly, but fairly
weakly, positively correlated. Scores on Subscale Awere
weakly and negatively correlated (rs < .3) with scores on
all other subscales. Scores on Subscale B were also largely
nonsignificantly and negatively correlated with children’s
scores on all other subscales, probably because children

scored uniformly high across age groups on this subscale.
Table 4. Summary of Tukey’s analyses showing, for each age
group,
the older age groups with a significantly different mean score
on a
particular subscale.
Comparison
age groups
Subscales with significantly different
mean scores
18–23 vs. 24–29 All scored subscales from C to N
30–35 Subscale A and all scored subscales from C to N
36–41 Subscale A and all scored subscales from C to N
42–47 Subscale A, B, and all scored subscales from C to N
24–29 vs. 30–35 Subscales A, F, G, H, I, M, N
36–41 Subscales A, F, G, H, I, J, K, M, N
42–47 Subscales A, F, G, H, I, J, K, M, N
30–35 vs. 36–41 Subscale N
42–47 Subscales A, J, K, M, and N
36–41 vs. 42–47 Subscale A
Note. Subscales A and B concerned gestures. Means on
Subscale B were
close to ceiling, and no significant differences were observed
between any
age groups on this subscale. Subscales E and L are not scored
subscales.
Table 5. Intercorrelations between all scored LUI subscales

from the typically developing sample (Study 1, N = 177)
controlling for
age (in months).
A B C D F G H I J K M
B .227**
C j.165* j.025
D j.144 .008 .787**
F j.155* .011 .692** .658**
G j.184* j.049 .704** .675** .740**
H j.260** j.035 .693** .697** .732** .813**
I j.197** j.002 .617** .642** .651** .684** .844**
J j.092 j.059 .236** .237** .392** .421** .469** .459**
K j.250** j.138 .489** .497** .536** .558** .656** .604**
.592**
M j.191* j.107 .512** .546** .615** .645** .771** .746**
.461** .698**
N j.189* j.187* .335** .322** .481** .492** .649** .572**
.509** .658** .765**
*p < .05. **p < .01.
50 • 214–228 • February 2007
This decrease in the use of gestures in relation to an in-
crease in the use of verbal forms is in keeping with the
findings of other researchers examining the relation be-
tween gestures and early speech.Namely, as otherauthors
have stated, “Gesture paves the way for language devel-
opment” (Iverson & Goldin-Meadow, 2005, p. 367), and
many of the lexical items that children first produce in
gesture subsequently appear in their verbal repertoire.

Turning to consideration of the remaining 10 sub-
scales that form Parts 2 and 3 of the questionnaire, it is
evident that the intercorrelations among children’s
scores on the first six scored subscales (C to I) were higher
(rs in range of .617 to .813; M = .709) than the inter-
correlations among the last four scored subscales, J to N
(rs in range of .236 to .746; M = .545). Overall, the mod-
erate r levels in the range of .32 to .70 for the large
majority (78%) of the possible 45 intercorrelations be-
tween children’s 10 subscale scores in Parts 2 and 3 of
the questionnaire suggest that these subscales are
measuring aspects of pragmatic language competence
that differ to a certain degree. The high intercorrelation
of some of the subscales could have led to their amalgam-
ation. This was not done for two reasons. First, phone
interviews with parents suggested that shorter sub-
scales with a greater focus were easier to complete.
Second, high intercorrelations found with a typically
developing group of children do not preclude the possi-
bility that different results might be found with sub-
populations of children with language impairment
(indeed, this was found to an extent with the children
in the discriminant validity study to be described next).
Test–Retest Reliability
Significant growth was observed in children’s scores
even within the short 4-week time period. That is, a
significant difference in mean score between Time 1 and
Time 2 ( p < .05) was found for all but three subscales
(SubscaleA:ImperativeGestures;B:DeclarativeGestures;
G:Questions/Comments About Things).Nevertheless,test–
retest stability and reliability were excellent, with all sub-
scales demonstrating significant Pearson correlations of
.85 to .96 ( p < .001) between the test and retest scores,

except for Subscale B (r = .34). When the correlations
were recomputed, controlling for age, the significance
results did not change, except that the range of partial
correlations for all subscales except B (r = .32) was be-
tween .75 and .89 (all ps < .001).
Study 2
The aim of Study 2 was to determine whether chil-
dren’s scores on the LUI would distinguish between
children with and without language delay. The scores of
children whose parents were seeking an initial assessment
at a child development center regarding possible language
delay were compared with those of a group of children
matched for sex and age (in months) drawn from our
laboratory database for whom no concern about their
language development had been expressed. Thus, this
study used a clinical population of children to examine
discriminant validity. For this particular clinic, parents
seeking an assessment did not need a physician’s referral.
Thus, this group of parents might be best categorized as
parents who, for one reason or another, felt their child’s
language development was not progressing as it should.
In the region in which this study was conducted, this child
development center is the primary location for speech-
language assessments.
Method
Materials
The materials used were identical to those used in
Study 1.
Procedure and Participants
During the time period from December 19, 2001, to

April 20, 2003, all parents who contacted a local child
development center and requested an assessment of their
child’s language were asked whether they would be wil-
ling to take part in the study by completing the LUI before
their child’s initial assessment. Parental consent to ob-
tain information about their child’s assessment and even-
tual diagnosis was also obtained. The child development
center mailed parents the LUI with a postage-paid and
pre-addressed envelope to return the questionnaire to the
university laboratory (i.e., the completed questionnaire
was at no time available to staff members of the child
development center). The children of parents who sought
an assessment of their language ability at the child devel-
opment center and took part in the study are referred to
as the clinic group.
When the completed questionnaire was received, a
parent with a child of the same sex and age in months
was contacted from the laboratory’s database and invited
to participate in the study by completing the LUI. This
age- and sex-matched sample of children drawn from our
laboratory database is referred to as the typically devel-
oping group.
The clinic group included 49 children (age range:
21–47 months; M = 28.8 months; 40 boys and 9 girls). By
design, the typically developing group was matched for
sex and age. Questionnaires were initially mailed out to
118 parents and 73 were returned (62% return rate).
Twenty-four questionnaires were dropped for the follow-
ing reasons: prematurity (10), missing data (4), comple-
tion date unknown (4), older than 47 months (3), second
language exposure beyond 20% of waking hours (2), and

because the child was discharged before assessment (1).
Six children were minimally exposed to a second lan-
guage (less than 6% of the child’s waking hours, including
Portuguese, German, Greek, Spanish, or French). The
center would not provide further demographic infor-
mation regarding the families, but it is known that all
children resided in two-parent homes. Once a child’s as-
sessment at the clinic was completed and a diagnosis
had been given, a member of the clinic staff retrieved from
the child’s file the information requested by the labora-
tory concerning the assessment procedure, the final diag-
nosis, and any other relevant health information such as
the presence of hearing loss. This information was for-
warded to the university. Information regarding the final
diagnoses of these children is presented next in the Results
and Discussion section.
Results and Discussion
Of the 49 clinic children, 43 (88%) were given a diag-
nosis of expressive language delay. Among these 43 chil-
dren, secondary diagnoses included receptive language
delay(n=7),receptiveandpragmaticlanguagedelay(n=2),
articulatory delay (n = 11), and phonological delay (n = 8).
Among the remaining 6 of the 49 clinic children, 5 (10%)
were given diagnoses of articulation delay and1 was given
a diagnosis of phonological delay. Mild hearing loss was
noted for 1 child. None of the 49 children were discharged
following assessment. The average time between the ini-
tial completion of the LUI and the time of assessment was
2.3 months, with a range from 0 to within 8 months. The
mean age of children at the time of assessment was

31.5 months (range: 25 to 52). Of the 49 children, 37% were
administered standardized tests during assessment, typ-
ically including one or more of the following: the PLS-3, the
CELF-P, the M-CDI, the Goldman Fristoe Test of Articu-
lation (Goldman & Fristoe, 1986), the Structured Photo-
graphic Articulation Test II (Dawson & Tattersall, 2001),
and the Weiss Comprehensive Articulation Test (Weiss,
1980). The remaining children (63%) were assessed using
observations conducted by the speech-language patholo-
gist during a session involving free-play and conversa-
tion with the child.
As was done in the third reliability study of the LUI,
a total score (out of 161) was summed from Parts 2 and 3
of the questionnaire. When the total scores of the clinic
group were compared with those of the typically devel-
oping group, the difference was strikingly large. Figure 2
shows the scores of the 49 age- and sex-matched child
pairs in order of increasing age from left to right. The
mean total score of the clinic group was 27.4 (SD = 23.2)
compared to 106.5 (SD = 27.2) for the typically devel-
oping group. The average difference in scores was 79.1
points (SE = 5.1), a difference that was significant, t(96) =
15.47, p < .001. Moreover, Figure 2 reveals that this
difference remained relatively stable across the entire
age range from 21 to 47 months.
Figure 3 shows the mean performance for each group
over all 12 scored subscales. With the notable exception
Figure 2. The total scores on the Language Use Inventory for
Young Children (LUI), plotted against age (in months), of the
49 age- and sex-matched children in the clinic and typically
developing groups.

50 • 214–228 • February 2007
of their mean performance on the two first Gesture
Subscales A and B, the mean performance of the clinic
group fell far below that of the typically developing group
on all remaining 10 subscales.
Results of a discriminant function analysis using
total scores, first conducted with age not taken into ac-
count, correctly classified 91.8% of the original 98 cases.
Sensitivity (clinic group children identified as such) was
95.9% and specificity (typically developing group chil-
dren identified as such) was 87.8%. These high rates of
correctclassification,withouteven takingageintoaccount,
can be understood if one refers back to Figure 2 and notes
that using total scores alone, a score of 65 or greater on the
LUI was obtained by all but 4 of the youngest typically
developing children (under 25 months of age) and only 2
of the clinic children.
A second discriminant function analysis was con-
ducted using total scores corrected for age (i.e., regression
was used to predict LUI scores from age and produce a
standardized residual score for each child). As expected,
this improved the specificity among the youngest typi-
cally developing children, and specificity rose to 95.9%.
The overall correct classification rate and sensitivity
were also 95.9%. The results of both of these analyses
strongly support the discriminant validity of the LUI.
The LUI exceeds even the most stringent criteria of 90%
accuracy suggested by psychometricians (e.g., Plante &
Vance, 1994).
Intercorrelations Among the Subscales

Table 6 shows the intercorrelations among all 12
scored subscales controlled for age (in months) from the
clinic group. Compared to the findings with the typically
developing children in the third reliability study shown
in Table 5, the clinic children’s scores on Subscale A (Im-
perative Gestures) were more strongly (negatively) cor-
related with their scores on all other subscales (r values of
.4–.5) than were typically developing children’s scores on
this subscale (rs < .3).
The intercorrelations among clinic children’s scores
on the 10 subscales that form Parts 2 and 3 of the ques-
tionnaire were all significant, but the magnitude of the
r values tended to be lower (range: .31–.75; M = .54)
than for the typically developing group (range: .24–.84;
M = .61). Moreover, compared to the typically developing
group, the clinic children’s scores on the later subscales
of Part 3 (I to N) showed a less steady increase in the
magnitude of their intercorrelation with prior subscales.
Overall, therefore, the moderate r levels of many of the
intercorrelations suggest that the subscales are mea-
suring aspects of pragmatic language competence that
are nonoverlapping to a certain extent, as was suggested
by the results among the typically developing children.
Nevertheless, the more variable pattern with respect to
the strength of the intercorrelations across subscales sug-
gests that for children with language delay, certain prag-
matic competencies, such as those tapped by the latter
Figure 3. The mean performance of the 49 children in the clinic
and age- and sex-matched typically developing group
on all 12 scored subscales of the LUI.

Subscales I to N, may be lagging behind others rather
than steadily increasing in tandem with each other. Ex-
actly what the nature of the profile of children with dif-
ferent types of language delay might look like across the
subscales of the LUI must await further research more
specifically designed to answer this question. It is note-
worthy, however, that the types of abilities assessed
in Subscales I to N are similar to those found to be prob-
lematic in older children judged as impaired in prag-
matic competence when assessed using the Pragmatics
Protocol and the CCC-2, such as problems with
ambiguous references, coherence, inappropriate initia-
tions, and inadequately informative contributions in
conversation (Bishop, 2003; Prutting & Kirchner, 1987).
Conclusions
The results of the two studies presented strongly
support the internal reliability and discriminant valid-
ity of the LUI. Alpha coefficient values for the subscales
very strongly confirmed their internal consistency and
reliability. Test–retest stability and reliability were also
strongly supported. Children’s scores on the subscales
showed clear and significant growth occurring between
the youngest (18–23 month) group and the oldest (42–
47 month) group, meeting a goal to elucidate in more detail
pragmatic growth in the less-chartered territory between
24 and 47 months of age. The pace of development in chil-
dren’s use of language across a wide variety of situations
was very rapid. In addition, the discriminant validity of
the LUI was strongly supported by its ability to distin-
guish between children with typically developing language
and a clinic sample of children with language delay with
sensitivity and specificity levels greater than 95%. Overall,

the results further confirm the value of parent report and
ease of use of the LUI, with short completion times and
few instances of missing data or problems encountered by
parents during completion of the questionnaire.
Limitations to this work exist that require further
study. Of interest is establishing the concurrent validity
of LUI by examining, for example, the relation between
children’s performance on the LUI and their performance
on available standardized tests that include some aspects
of pragmatic competence such as the CSBS (Wetherby
& Prizant, 1993) or relevant laboratory-based measures
such as storytelling. Such laboratory studies could also
examine divergent validity by examining whether chil-
dren’s scores on the LUI are more strongly correlated
with their performance on laboratory measures than on
other, more general (i.e., focused more broadly on lan-
guage development in general and not pragmatics per
se) parent-report measures of language development
and other standardized tests of language development.
Longitudinal studies could examine its predictive rela-
tion with children’s performance on measures appro-
priate for older children such as the Test of Pragmatic
Language (Phelps-Terasaki & Phelps-Gunn, 1992). Dis-
criminant validity and the LUI’s sensitivity and speci-
ficity could also be investigated with a larger, general
(nonclinical) population.
Nevertheless, the results of the studies presented in
this article suggest a very good potential for the LUI to
serve as a screening measure to detect delay in language
use in toddlers and preschoolers. Although the LUI is
not standardized at present, a standardization study
involving Canadian children is underway.

For clinicians and researchers, the LUI may also pro-
vide a measure to investigate and distinguish more sys-
tematically differences in areas of impairment (i.e., lexical
or grammatical vs. pragmatic) or examine, based on sub-
scale performance, profiles of pragmatic competence for
different populations of children displaying language
Table 6. Intercorrelations between all scored LUI subscales
from the clinic children in the study of discriminant validity (N
= 49)
controlling for age (in months).
A B C D F G H I J K M
B .329*
C j.421** .032
D j.398** j.049 .727**
F j.513** .031 .588** .664**
G j.436** .079 .747** .642** .667**
H j.537** .054 .645** .637** .732** .731**
I j.476** j.006 .396** .436** .639** .519** .735**
J j.054 .193 .372** .307* .343** .379** .577** .318*
K j.239 .052 .533** .528** .426** .519** .668** .532** .580**
M j.538** .103 .445** .497** .642** .554** .627** .639**
.321* .511**
N j.417** j.026 .421** .342** .440** .439** .592** .325*
.471** .469** .528**
*p < .05. **p < .01.
50 • 214–228 • February 2007
impairment. The LUI may also provide a measure to equate

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