MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) Words and Sentences Forms

The Words and Sentences Form, part of the third edition of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs), is a comprehensive instrument designed for use with ages 16 to 30 months. To complete the inventory, parents document the child’s production of hundreds of words, record the child’s use of early forms of grammar, and provide written examples of the child’s three longest utterances. It is available in a pack of 25 paper forms.

ABOUT THE CDIs

The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs) are one of the most widely used and recommended measures of language and communication for young children.

Used in both research and clinical settings, these parent report instruments help SLPs and other professionals screen children, develop a prognosis for children with language delays, plan effective intervention, monitor progress, and meet mandates for including parent input in child evaluation.

The third edition of the CDIs includes updated norms, additional tools, and more administration formats and helpful resources. Learn more about the MacArthur-Bates CDIs, Third Edition here.

Larry Fenson, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University in California. Dr. Fenson has published research on infant attentiveness, early symbolic development, categorization, children's drawing skills, play, and early language development. He received his doctorate in child psychology from the University of Iowa. He served as Assistant Professor at the University of Denver and was a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development postdoctoral fellow with Jerome Kagan at Harvard University. Dr. Fenson is Chair of The CDI Advisory Board.

Virginia A. Marchman, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas. Dr. Marchman holds a master of arts degree and a doctorate in developmental psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research in Language at the University of California, San Diego. She has conducted research in several areas of language and cognitive development, language disorders, and early childhood development. Her most recent work focuses on the identification of precursors of language delay and individual differences in lexical and morphological development in monolingual English and bilingual (Spanish and English) speakers. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research and was named Distinguished Scholar at the Callier Center for Communication Disorders. Dr. Marchman has worked on the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories and the MacArthur Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas for the last 15 years. She is author of the CDI Scoring Program.

Donna J. Thal, Ph.D., holds a master of science degree in speech pathology and audiology from Brooklyn College and a doctorate in speech and hearing sciences from the Graduate School and University Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research in Language at UCSD, an assistant professor at Hofstra University, and an assistant professor at Queens College of CUNY. Dr. Thal is a developmental psycholinguist and a certified and licensed speech-language pathologist who has conducted research in a number of areas, including normal and disordered development of language and cognition, children with focal brain injury, and children with delayed onset of language. She has also carried out studies of language development in Spanish-speaking infants and toddlers. Her most recent work focuses on early identification of risk for clinically significant language impairment and is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders (NIDCD), within the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Thal is an editorial consultant for language for the Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research and the American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology. She was the California State nominee for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Foundation Outstanding Clinical Achievement Award in 1996, received the Monty Distinguished Faculty Award from SDSU 1998 and the Albert W. Johnson Research Lecturer Award from SDSU in 1999, and was the Wang Family Excellence Award nominee from SDSU in 2000. She served a 4-year term on the Communicative Disorders Review Committee for the NIDCD from 1998 to 2002. Dr. Thal is a co-author of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories.

Philip S. Dale, Ph.D., is Professor in Departments of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech and Hearing Sciences at University of Washington. Dr. Dale's research interests include assessment of young children's language, language development in exceptional populations including linguistically precocious children, early language and cognition, and the effects of various models of intervention for young children with disabilities.

J. Steven Reznick, Ph.D., is an affiliate of the Department of Psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Bates was a founding member of the Cognitive Science Department at University of California at San Diego (the first of its kind in the world), the Director of the federally-funded UCSD Project in Cognitive and Neural Development, a founding co-director of the innovative Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders at San Diego State University and UCSD, and the Director of the Center for Research in Language and Professor of Cognitive Science at UCSD. With strengths in developmental psychology, linguistics, neurology, and cognitive science, she carried out many creative and influential collaborative studies on the interrelations among language acquisition, brain function, symbolic growth, and other key aspects of development. During her extensive career, she directed cross-linguistic studies on 4 continents and authored or co-authored 10 books and more than 200 scientific publications. Her work was interdisciplinary, influencing diverse fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, biology, psychology, computer science, and medicine.