Haur euskaldun txikien hiztegia azkar neurtzeko tresna

Abstract

During the limited time of the consultation, pediatricians usually take into account what parents/caregivers accompanying the child tell them about their child, since without being health professionals, they are privileged observers and witness of the behaviour of their child in various moments and varied situations. Similarly, pediatricians may find useful what the parent/caregivers tell them about their child’s linguistic skills, since parents can inform accurately of many words the child understands and says (or does not), without being linguists. Standardized tools for gathering this knowledge are scarce, and still more in Basque.

In this short article we present the short versions of KGNZ, the Basque Communicative Development Inventory instrument, three questionnaires developed for the measurement of lexical knowledge in Basque of 1 to 4 year-olds, which were designed for parents/caregivers to complete easily and quickly: KGNZ-1lab (8-15/24 months), KGNZ-2lab (16-30 months) and KGNZ-3 (30-50 months).

These standardized tools make it possible to compare the lexical knowledge of each child with that of their peers and to see whether (s)he has a language development comparable to that of most of them, or whether (s)he shows signs of delay. The percentile tables, organized in one- or two-month age groups, are based on a large sample of children aged between 8 and 50 months gathered in the Basque Country. Examples from two children illustrate how the results obtained with the KGNZ-1lab tool are interpreted.