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Early word-object associations and later language development

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 First Language
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Early word-object associations and later language development

Barbara May Bernhardt, Nenagh Kemp and Janet F. Werker
First Language 2007; 27; 315
DOI: 10.1177/0142723707081652

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 ARTICLE

FIRST
LANGUAGE
Copyright © 2007 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, and Singapore)
www.sagepublications.com Vol 27(4): 315–328 (200711)
DOI: 10.1177/0142723707081652

Early word-object associations and later

language development
Barbara May Bernhardt, University of British Columbia
Nenagh Kemp, University of Tasmania
Janet F. Werker, University of British Columbia

ABSTRACT
Early language skills vary considerably across children, especially before the
age of about two years. Thus, it can be difficult to distinguish between ‘late
bloomers’ and children who show a language delay or impairment. Here we
present the results of a longitudinal study wherein toddlers’ performance on a
looking-time-based ‘Switch’ task of word-object association (Stager & Werker,
1997) was related to the children’s later language skills. Word-object associ-
ation performance at 17 or 20 months was significantly related to scores on
some standardized tests of language comprehension and production up to
two and a half years later. The implications of these results for further early
identification research are discussed.

KEYWORDS
Early word learning; language development; late talkers; MacArthur-Bates CDI;
switch task

Language comprehension and production skills in children under the age of two years
vary widely across individuals (Fenson et al., 1994). While some toddlers are combin-
ing a range of words into phrases, others are still producing only a few single words.
This variability in rate of language acquisition makes early identification of language
delay or impairment challenging (Rescorla, 1989). Early identification is important if

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 FIRST
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children are to receive early language intervention, thus maximizing their potential for
active and successful lives (e.g., Aram & Hall, 1989; Bernhardt & Major, 2005;
Magnusson & Naucler, 1998). The primary method for assessing children’s language
abilities before the age of 2 years is to ask parents to report on their child’s language
abilities, a method with variable specificity and sensitivity, as discussed below. To
increase specificity and sensitivity, more precise measurement techniques are required.
The current study is an exploratory investigation into the relations between toddlers’
performance on a word-object association task and their later language skills. This
represents the first step in determining whether such a task may be able to contribute
to language screening in toddlers, so that possible language delay or impairment may
be identified earlier.
As noted above, parent reports are a commonly used tool for assessing language
development in toddlers. Such reports can provide a more comprehensive and repre-
sentative picture of children’s early language skills than is possible in a brief, often for-
mal encounter with a clinician or an experimenter (Feldman et al., 2000). Perhaps the
most widely used parent report – both in English-speaking countries and elsewhere –
is the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Inventory, or CDI (Fenson et al., 1994;
Hemmer & Ratner, 1994; Jackson-Maldonado, Thal, Marchman, Bates & Gutierrez-
Clellen, 1993). The validity and reliability of parental report depends crucially on par-
ents’ ability to observe their children’s comprehension and production of vocabulary
and sentences. The vocabulary production section appears to be the most reliable
measure in the CDI. Several researchers have found that parents appear highly cap-
able of evaluating their children’s production of words (Dale, Price & Bishop, 2003;
Feldman et al., 2000; Ring & Fenson, 2000), even when their children show language
delay (Thal, O’Hanlon, Clemmons & Fralin, 1999). Furthermore, parental reports of
vocabulary production seem to be unaffected by differences in maternal education,
approximate income and race (Feldman et al., 2000). On the other hand, compre-
hension scores are reported to be less reliable. Although some researchers have found
significant correspondence between parent report and actual child comprehension
(Ring & Fenson, 2000), others have shown parental estimates of child comprehension
to correlate negatively with years of maternal education (Fenson et al., 1993; Thal et
al., 1999; Tomasello & Mervis, 1994) and with health insurance status, taken as a
measure of income (Feldman et al., 2000). Parents with lower education and SES
levels tended to overestimate their children’s language comprehension skills in those
studies.
Moreover, the CDI is designed as a measure of young children’s language devel-
opment at the time of testing, not as a tool for prediction of later language skills.
Some studies have shown positive correlations in CDI scores at earlier and later ages,
but others have not. In studies of English-speaking (Fenson et al., 1994) and Dutch-
speaking children (Bornstein, Putnick & De Houwer, 2006), individual differences in
the language comprehension and production skills of toddlers remained relatively
stable between the ages of 13 and 20 months. However, in a larger-scale study of
2156 children, Feldman et al. (2000) found that correlations between performance
on the Infant version of the CDI and on the Toddler version, one year later, ranged
from 0.18 (mostly on comprehension sections) to 0.39 (on vocabulary production

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 BERNHARDT ET AL.: THE SWITCH TASK AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

sections). These statistically significant but only moderately sized effects led the
authors to caution against using either version of the CDI as a tool for identifying
children at risk for later language impairment or delay. At age 1, there were too
many floor effects for reliable identification of impairment, and at age 2 the stand-
ard deviation equalled the mean of three of the measures, showing high variability
and, again, low reliability for identifying impairment. Dale et al. (2003) measured the
vocabulary production scores of 8386 British twin children at the age of 2 years, from
the 100-item short form of the CDI (Fenson et al., 2000). They found statistically sig-
nificant relations between this early vocabulary measure and later proficiency in
vocabulary, grammar and abstract language at the ages of 3 and 4 years. However,
effect sizes were small, and accuracy of prediction was too poor to be of practical
use in discriminating persistent and transient difficulties with language. Sixty per cent
of the children who scored at or below the 10th percentile at Time 1 performed within
normal limits on language tests at age 4. More recently, Tsao, Liu & Kuhl (2004)
found significant correlations between CDI scores at ages 13 and 16 months, but not
between scores at each of these earlier ages and those at 24 months. Thus, despite
the CDI’s usefulness as an estimator of current language ability in toddlers, other
measures are clearly needed for the prediction of later language skills.
A different way of assessing young children’s abilities is to measure their behaviour
directly, rather than via parent report. Increasingly, researchers are beginning to assess
different aspects of language skills, and to examine their predictive validity for sub-
sequent language development. For example, it has recently been shown that accuracy
of speech perception at 9 months (Tsao et al., 2004), skill at word segmentation at
7–9 months (Newman, Bernstein Ratner, Jusczyk, Jusczyk & Dow, 2006) and speed of
word recognition at 15 months (Fernald, Perfors & Marchman, 2006) all correlate sig-
nificantly with later vocabulary size. Further, newborn infants’ auditory event-related
potentials in response to consonant-vowel syllables have predicted verbal abilities at
the age of 3 years (Molfese & Molfese, 1985) and 5 years (Molfese & Molfese, 1997)
and reading level at 8 years (Molfese, 2000). These studies suggest that a funda-
mental step in assembling a vocabulary is to use the native speech sound categories
established in the first year of life to direct word learning. Hence, a task that taps into
this skill set might be particularly sensitive for identifying infants who might experi-
ence difficulties in language acquisition. One such measure is the ‘Switch’ task, a
word-object association task developed by Cohen, Werker and colleagues (e.g.,
Cohen, 1998; Stager & Werker, 1997). In this task, infants are presented with two
pairs of stimuli, each consisting of a novel word presented auditorily through speak-
ers, and a novel, moving object presented visually on a TV screen. These word-object
pairs are alternated until there is a criterial decline in the child’s looking time to the
screen (usually to 50% of initial looking time). Two test trials ensue: a ‘Same’ trial (one
of the two original word-object combinations) and a ‘Switch’ trial (original word and
object in novel combination). An increased looking time to the switched pairing is
taken to indicate that infants have noticed the change in the original pairings, and
that they therefore have learnt the original word-object associations.
Studies of 14-month-olds have shown that infants of that age look longer to Switch
than to Same trials when phonetically dissimilar words are used, e.g., lif and neem

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 FIRST
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(Werker, Cohen, Lloyd, Casasola & Stager, 1998). However, when presented with phon-
etically similar labels bih and dih, 14-month-olds look equally to Switch and Same
trials, showing no evidence of having learned the bih and dih labels (Stager & Werker,
1997). This difficulty in learning phonetically similar words is temporary. At 17 and 20
months, the majority of infants notice the switched pairings with the phonetically simi-
lar words (Werker, Fennell, Corcoran & Stager, 2002). More intriguing is the finding
that, although infants of 14 months failed to notice the switch between the phonetic-
ally similar words bih and dih, in a simplified, single-object version of this task,
infants of 8 months succeeded (Werker et al., 1998). The authors suggested that the
8-month-olds succeeded because they were treating the task as a simple phonetic dis-
crimination task (between bih and dih). Older infants, who are learning to link words
with objects, appear to treat the task as a word learning task, which is more difficult.
Taken together, the above results suggest that even young infants can discriminate
similar-sounding words if they process them merely as acoustic forms. However, when
infants attempt to link the words with objects (as in the Switch task), the cognitive
demands of the task are greater. Werker et al. (1998, 2002) suggest that at the earlier
stages of word learning (around the age of 14 months), the identification of word-
object links is the focus of attention; thus, children temporarily ignore fine phonetic
detail, even though they are able to discriminate it. As infants’ proficiency in word-
object association improves (by age 17–20 months), more cognitive resources become
available, allowing infants to pay attention to fine phonetic detail, and hence pass the
Switch task even when the words sound very similar (bih and dih); see Werker &
Fennell (2004). Further support for this notion comes the finding that infants of
14 months succeed when the test words are highly familiar (doll and ball); Fennell &
Werker, 2003.
The Switch word learning task using minimal pairs (such as bih-dih) thus shows
a developmental change across the second year of life, with variable performance
across infants. A task that discriminates across age and across individuals has the
potential to act as a useful diagnostic predictor. Children who notice the ‘switch’
have noticed something unexpected (novel), and therefore look longer at the
switched stimuli pairing than at the familiar pairing from the habituation trials.
Success on the explicitly language-based Switch task requires attention to phonetic
detail (in the similar-sounding nonsense words presented), and the ability to learn the
association between a pictured object and a label (a skill that constitutes an essential
step toward learning about word meaning). The aim of the present study was to
explore whether performance on this Switch task by toddlers at age 17 or 20 months
(reported in Werker et al., 2002) would be related to their later language skills, as
measured on standardized tests of language comprehension and production.

METHOD

Participants
The participants for the current study had taken part in the Switch procedure study
described in Werker et al. (2002) at the age of 17 or 20 months. All were of at least

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 BERNHARDT ET AL.: THE SWITCH TASK AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

37 weeks’ gestation, had had uneventful births and were apparently in good
health, both at the initial test and at the time of the follow-up tests (described
below). The children were all exposed to English at least 70% of the time and were
from relatively high SES families. The parents of 16 of these infants had completed
the Toddler version of the CDI (Words and Sentences) for their child at the time of the
Switch task. The 32 children who had participated in the Switch task study in the
year prior to the current study (Werker et al., 2002) were invited to participate in
two follow-up trials. The parents of 26 of these participants agreed, and for the first
follow-up they completed the Toddler version of the CDI for their children. Time
between initial test and first follow-up ranged from 5 to 17 months, with a mean
delay of 11.46 months (SD 3.63, median 11). Fourteen months later, the parents of
15 of these participants agreed to have their children participate in a second follow-
up study, which used a battery of standardized speech and language assessment
tasks (described below). The participants’ ages at the two follow-up points are
reported in Table 1.

Procedure
Follow-up 1
The parents of the 26 children who agreed to participate in the first follow-up were
given standard instructions on how to complete the vocabulary production section
of the Toddler version of the CDI. This section asks parents to indicate the words
that their child produced, from a list of 680 words divided into 22 semantic cat-
egories. The parents completed the form and returned it by mail. This Toddler ver-
sion of the CDI provides norms for children aged 16–30 months, but some of the
participants were older than 30 months.

Follow-up 2
Of the same 26 children, 15 participated in a second follow-up study, which com-
prised a series of speech and language tests commonly used by speech and lan-
guage therapists in North America to assess preschoolers. Children were seen in

Table 1 Mean ages and age ranges (in months) for infants in Follow-ups 1 and 2

Follow-up Original age N* Mean age and Age range

group (SD)

1 17 months 15 (7 m, 8 f) 25.9 (2.13) 22–29

20 months 11 (5 m, 6 f) 35.0 (1.61) 25–37
2 17 months 10 (4 m, 6 f) 40.1 (2.37) 37–43
20 months 5 (2 m, 3 f) 48.4 (2.19) 46–50

*m ⫽ male, f ⫽ female.

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 FIRST
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their homes or in a playroom at the university by a speech-language therapist, and

were given the following tasks:

(1) The Preschool Language Scale – 3 (PLS-3; Zimmerman, Steiner & Pond, 1992).
The PLS-3 has two subscales, Auditory Comprehension and Expressive
Communication. The Auditory Comprehension (AC) subscale tests children’s
ability to understand verbal instructions through pointing to the appropriate
object or picture, or carrying out actions with toys and objects. The Expressive
Communication (EC) subscale tests children’s ability to communicate by initi-
ating games, pointing, producing sounds and words, and answering questions.
(2) The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test – Revised (PPVT-R; Dunn & Dunn, 1981),
a multiple-choice vocabulary comprehension test in which the child points to
one of four pictures, the one he or she thinks best illustrates the word the
experimenter says.
(3) The Photo Articulation Test – 3 (PAT-3; Lippke, Dickey, Selmar & Soder, 1997),
a photograph-based naming task, designed to elicit all the phonemes of
English in single words.

RESULTS

The children’s Switch task performance and concurrent CDI scores at 17 or 20

months are reported first below. Their scores on the CDI at Follow-up 1 and a stand-
ard speech-language battery at Follow-up 2 are then reported and compared with
the original test scores.

Scores at original testing time

The time that each infant had looked at the Same and Switch trials (each shown for
20 seconds) in the original Switch task (Werker et al., 2002) was recorded. To assay
individual differences in performance, the difference between each infant’s looking
times to the Switch and Same trials was calculated (as in Werker et al., 2002) and
used as the predictive variable for scores on later tasks.
Table 2 shows that, on average, infants in both the 17- and the 20-month age group
looked longer at the Switch than Same trials. A repeated-measures analysis of variance
confirmed that the longer mean looking time for Switch than Same was significant (F
(1, 24) ⫽ 4.63, p ⫽ 0.04, effect size (partial ␩2) ⫽ 0.16), and that there was no main
effect of, or interaction with, age group. This confirms that the group of children who
participated in this follow-up study indeed had succeeded in learning the task’s word-
object association, like the larger group reported in Werker et al. (2002). As shown in
Table 2, both groups had very similar difference scores for Switch-Same disparity.
A one-way ANOVA confirmed that the two age groups’ Switch-Same difference
scores on the Switch task did not differ significantly, F (1, 25) ⫽ 0.029, p⫽ 0.87. How-
ever, the relatively large standard deviations in Table 2 show that there was much
individual variation in looking time; in fact, difference scores ranged from ⫺10.8
to ⫹14.8 seconds.

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 BERNHARDT ET AL.: THE SWITCH TASK AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

Table 2 Infant performance at initial testing point: mean looking times (in seconds)
on Switch task to, and between, Switch and Same trials, plus CDI scores
(SD in brackets)

Age group ‘Same’ ‘Switch’ Switch-Same CDI raw CDI % ile

(months) looking time looking time difference scorea rank

17 (N⫽15) 8.93 (5.13) 11.63 (4.36) 2.75 (5.94) 127.43b 57.86b

(87.97) (32.77)
20 (N⫽11) 9.89 (6.36) 12.24 (5.37) 2.35 (6.00) 254.44c 56.00c
(220.37) (38.81)
Overall 9.34 (5.58) 11.89 (4.72) 2.58 (5.85) 198.88d 56.81d
(N ⫽ 26) (182.29) (35.13)

a Maximum possible ⫽ 680.

b N ⫽ 7 for CDI (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory; Fenson et al., 1993).
c N ⫽ 9 for CDI.
d N ⫽ 16 for CDI.

For the infants for whom CDI scores were available, the 20-month-olds appeared
to have larger production vocabularies in terms of raw scores than the 17-month-
olds. However, a one-way ANOVA showed that this difference failed to reach signif-
icance, F (1, 14) ⫽ 2.05, p ⫽ 0.18. The lack of significance can probably be attributed
to the largely overlapping ranges of raw CDI scores: from 15 to 249 for 17-month-
olds, and from 31 to 264 for 20-month-olds. As can be seen from the CDI percentile
ranks shown in Table 3, both groups had productive vocabularies about average for
their age; they did not differ significantly on this measure, F (1, 14) ⫽ 0.01, p ⫽ 0.92.

Switch-Same looking time differences and later language

performance
Follow-up 1
At the first follow-up, 12 of the 26 children were older than 30 months of age,
which is the upper age limit in the CDI norming sample. Thus, because CDI per-
centile ranks could not be determined for these participants, raw scores are also
reported in Table 3.
Pearson correlations were calculated for the infants’ Switch-Same looking time
difference at age 17 or 20 months, and parent-reported production vocabulary size
(on the CDI) at the first follow-up, 5 to 17 months later. The correlation between
Switch-Same difference and CDI raw scores showed a trend towards significance,
r ⫽ 0.367, p ⫽ 0.065. The correlation coefficient for CDI percentiles was larger
(r ⫽ 0.452), but did not reach significance (p ⫽ 0.105).

Follow-up 2
Fifteen of the 26 children from Follow-up 1 continued to participate at Follow-up 2.
To ensure that the smaller sample of children who went on to the second follow-up

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Table 3 Mean scores for the CDI at Follow-up 1, and Standard Scores for the PLS-3,
PPVT-R and PAT-3 at Follow-up 2 (SD in brackets)

Age group CDI raw CDI % ile PLS-3 PLS-3 PLS-3 PPVT-R PAT-3
(months) score ranks EC AC TLS

17 428.73 58.77 111.90 114.20 114.70 110.67 111.3

(212.76) (33.26) (16.67) (10.35) (13.34) (12.56) (10.59)
N 15 13 10 10 10 9

20 609.36 99.00 113.00 114.80 115.60 120.25 112.80

(70.41) (⫺) (10.34) (17.15) (14.98) (13.96) (7.12)
N 11 1 5 5 5 4 5

Overall 505.15 61.64 112.27 114.40 115.00 113.62 111.86

(188.72) (33.72) (14.47) (12.37) (13.37) (13.23) (9.23)
N 26 14 15 15 15 13 13

Note. CDI, PAT-3, PLS-3, EC, AC, TLS and PPVT-R are explained in the text (p. 320).

did not represent a special population of those originally tested, control analyses
were run, comparing earlier scores of those infants who continued at Follow-up 2
with those who did not. There were no significant differences between those two
groups in terms of their Switch-Same difference scores or their CDI scores (either raw
or percentile ranks) initially or at Follow-up 1; thus, Follow-up 2 analyses were per-
formed for the smaller group. Standardized scores on the PLS-3 (including Total
Language Score, TLS, which combines EC and AC scores), PPVT-R and PAT-3 are
shown in Table 3. (Three children chose not to complete the PPVT-R and/or the PAT-3,
which resulted in a lower N for these tasks.)
At Follow-up 2, significant Pearson correlation coefficients were found between
the children’s Switch-Same looking-time differences and several of the language
scores. The PLS-3 Total Language score showed r ⫽ 0.791, p ⬍ 0.001 (with signifi-
cant positive correlations for both the subscales contributing to this score: EC
r ⫽ 0.718, p ⫽ 0.003; AC r ⫽ 0.709, p ⫽ 0.003). The PPVT-R and Switch task also
showed significant positive correlations: r ⫽ 0.542, p ⫽ 0.056. PAT-3 scores were not
significantly correlated with the Switch scores: r ⫽ ⫺0.036, p ⫽ 0.904.
Thus, early word-object association abilities, as measured by the Switch task,
were significantly related to language skills one to two years later, in both language
comprehension and production. Switch task performance was not significantly cor-
related with scores on the PAT-3, but many participants performed close to ceiling
on this task. Six of the 14 children showed 3 or fewer phoneme mismatches on the
PAT-3 with the adult targets, another five between 5 and 8 mismatches, and only
two children showed large numbers of mismatches (14 and 29).
Correlation coefficients based on small samples must necessarily be interpreted
with caution; thus, a second set of analyses was run to evaluate the results further.

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 BERNHARDT ET AL.: THE SWITCH TASK AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

For the second analysis, participants were divided into two groups on the basis of
their relative performance on the Switch task at the original testing time. The div-
ision point for the two groups was the median Switch-Same looking time difference
of 2.3 seconds. This time difference was very close to the participants’ mean Switch-
Same looking-time difference of 2.58 seconds, and nearly identical to the common
difference seen when significant results are obtained in the Switch task with a sam-
ple size of 16 (as in, e.g., Werker et al., 2002). The two groups were compared in
terms of later language performance in a series of one-way analyses of variance,
some of which revealed significant differences. At Follow-up 1, those in the
‘⬎2.3 seconds’ group had significantly higher CDI percentile ranks (M ⫽76.44, SD ⫽
19.55) than those in the ‘⬍2.3 seconds’ group (M ⫽ 35.00, SD ⫽ 39.37); F(1, 13) ⫽
7.17, p ⫽ 0.020, effect size (partial ␩2) ⫽ 0.37. At Follow-up 2, the two groups
showed significant differences in their PLS-3 Total Language scores. Those in the
‘⬎2.3 seconds’ group scored significantly higher (M ⫽121.33, SD ⫽ 10.71) than
those in the ‘⬍2.3 seconds’ group (M ⫽ 105.50, SD ⫽ 11.33); F(1, 13) ⫽ 7.34, p ⫽
0.010, effect size (partial ␩2) ⫽ 0.36. It seems that this effect was attributable more to
differences in language comprehension than in language production skills. Examining
the PLS-3 subscales separately revealed a significant difference between the means for
the Auditory Comprehension scores (‘⬎2.3 seconds’ M ⫽ 121.11, SD ⫽ 7.64, ‘⬍2.3
seconds’ M ⫽104.33, SD ⫽ 11.50, F(1, 13) ⫽ 11.68, p ⫽ 0.005, effect size (partial ␩2)⫽
0.47). There was also a significant difference between the groups on PPVT-R scores,
with the ‘⬎2.3 seconds’ group scoring higher (M ⫽ 119.88, SD ⫽ 13.14) than those
in the ‘⬍2.3 seconds’ group (M ⫽ 103.60, SD ⫽ 4.39); F(1, 11) ⫽ 6.97, p ⫽ 0.023,
effect size (partial ␩ 2) ⫽ 0.39. The two groups’ scores did not differ, however, on the
Expressive Communication subscale of the PLS-3, or on the PAT-3.

CDI scores and later language performance

Although the CDI was designed to assess concurrent abilities, rather than to predict
later language development, several studies have examined relationships between CDI
scores and later language development. Thus, the current study also examined the
relationships between children’s CDI scores at initial test and language skills at Follow-
up 1 (for the subset of children for whom these scores were available). Some signifi-
cant correlations were found. Initial CDI raw scores correlated significantly with CDI
raw scores at Follow-up 1 (N ⫽16): r ⫽ 0.533, p ⫽0.034 (there were no significant cor-
relations for percentile scores, N ⫽ 8). Initial CDI raw scores correlated significantly with
PPVT-R scores at Follow-up 2 (N ⫽ 9): r ⫽ 0.737, p ⫽ 0.024. Although initial CDI raw
scores did not correlate significantly with the Total Language scores from the PLS-3,
there was a trend towards a significant correlation with performance on the AC
Subscale, r ⫽ 0.608, p ⫽ 0.062 (N ⫽ 10). Follow-up 1 CDI raw scores showed no
significant correlations with later tasks, but Follow-up 1 CDI percentile scores (avail-
able for only 9 children) again correlated significantly with the comprehension-
based tests: both the PPVT-R at Follow-up 2, r ⫽ 0.741, p ⫽ 0.022, and the PLS-3
AC subscale, r ⫽ 0.712, p ⫽ 0.021. These significant correlations are interesting,
because concurrent CDI scores did not correlate significantly with Switch-Same

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looking-time difference, and yet both correlated significantly with the later com-
prehension test scores.

DISCUSSION

The present study investigated potential relationships between children’s perform-

ance on the Switch task of minimal-pair word-object association at age 17 or 20
months, and later language skills. Correlations between the magnitude of infants’
preference for a novel versus a familiar word-object pairing on the Switch task, and
MacArthur-Bates CDI production vocabulary at the first follow-up (5–17 months
later) did not reach conventional levels of significance. However, there were signifi-
cant correlations between strength of early preference for switched word-object
pairings, and scores on standardized tests of language comprehension and produc-
tion in the second follow-up (PLS-3, PPVT-R), up to two and a half years later.
Although the relatively small number of participants necessitates caution in inter-
preting these correlations, the confirmation of the same pattern using a median split
suggests a certain amount of robustness and consistency in this relation. As such,
these results provide preliminary evidence that the ability to use phonological dis-
tinctions to guide early word-object association is related to later language compre-
hension and production.
In contrast, throughout the correlational and comparative analyses conducted,
there were no significant relationships between early performance on the Switch task
and later performance on the Photo Articulation Test-3 (Lippke et al., 1997). However,
most children performed near ceiling on that test. A more challenging test of phonol-
ogy (with a greater set of multisyllabic words) may have been more discriminatory.
The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Developmental Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al.,
1993), used in this study and many others, is designed to provide a measure of
children’s current vocabulary size. As described in the introduction, the CDI was not
designed to be used as a predictive tool, and studies of its predictive value have indi-
cated only limited success, particularly with lower SES groups. In the current study
of a relatively high SES group, CDI scores (for the subset of participants for whom
these were available) did show significant positive correlations with several later
scores. Initial CDI raw scores, although not percentile ranks, correlated significantly
with CDI raw scores in Follow-up 1, although with slightly larger r-values than those
found by other authors (e.g., Dale et al., 2003; Feldman et al., 2000). Both initial
CDI raw scores (although not percentile scores), and Follow-up 1 CDI percentile
scores (although not raw scores) correlated significantly with scores on tests of com-
prehension (the Auditory Comprehension subscale of the PLS-3 and the PPVT-R) at
Follow-up 2. As mentioned earlier, Switch-Same looking-time difference also corre-
lated significantly with comprehension, but not with CDI scores. These results thus
showed some relationship between early parental reports of vocabulary production
and later language comprehension measures, although only Switch task perform-
ance was significantly related to both comprehension and production measures.
The results of the present study converge with those of Fernald et al. (2006). In
the latter study, vocabulary size at 25 months (as measured by the PPVT) was related

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 BERNHARDT ET AL.: THE SWITCH TASK AND LANGUAGE SKILLS

to concurrent speed of processing in word recognition tasks, and to almost all

measures of language tested from as early as 12 months of age. Furthermore, word
recognition at 25 months continued to predict growth in production of vocabulary
across the second year of life. In the current study, the relationship between the CDI
and the minimal pair Switch task would suggest that the ability to use phonological
categories to learn words supports vocabulary acquisition (as indexed by the CDI)
and later advancement in lexical performance. Success on the Switch task requires
an ability to cope with the cognitive demands of linking a new word with a new
object (e.g., Dollaghan, 1985) while simultaneously accessing fine phonetic detail
(Stager & Werker, 1997; Werker et al., 2002). The present results would suggest
that infants who succeed at this task at the age of 17–20 months also employ these
abilities to associate words and objects quickly in the real world. This may account
for their faster gains in language development.
An alternative interpretation is that the link between performance in the Switch
task and later language is mediated, not through harnessing phonological categories
to direct word learning, but instead via individual differences in the ability to learn.
A series of studies has shown that rapid habituation and/or strong preference for
novelty in infancy (generally interpreted as indicators of more efficient styles of infor-
mation processing) may be related to higher cognitive skills in childhood (e.g.,
Bornstein & Sigman, 1986; Colombo, 1997; McCall & Carriger, 1993; Slater, 1995).
Although such research has typically employed non-linguistic stimuli, recent studies
have shown a more specific and possibly privileged relationship between early per-
formance in habituation tasks and subsequent linguistic skills. Indeed, meta-analyses
have shown that the decrement and recovery of attention in infancy can account for
18% of the variance in childhood intelligence tests (Bornstein & Sigman, 1986), and
that normalized correlations between habituation/recognition memory and later IQ
were at 0.36 (McCall & Carriger, 1993). Thus, although a large proportion of the
variance remains unaccounted for, early information processing is helpful in predict-
ing later childhood cognitive performance. Further, a special link may exist between
attention in infancy and language proficiency in childhood: the outcome measures
most often reported in studies of the decrement or recovery of attention in infants
are later verbal ability and psychometric intelligence (itself strongly related to verbal
skills) (Bornstein & Sigman, 1986; Colombo, Shaddy, Richman, Maikranz & Blaga,
2004). A related finding in several studies is that young infants who are better able
to establish and maintain joint attention with a parent have larger vocabularies later
on (e.g., Saxon, 1997; Tomasello & Farrar, 1986; Tomasello & Todd, 1983). The
Switch task is a non-social task, but may engage processing mechanisms similar to
those in social interaction in terms of joint attention. Further research is needed to
tease apart the relative contribution of a specific relation between minimal pair word
learning tasks and subsequent language development, versus a relationship that is
mediated by more general cognitive and/or social skills. To address this question, and
test other alternative interpretations, the authors and colleagues are conducting a
larger study that includes not only purportedly normally developing children, but also
children with familial risk for a language delay.
In summary, the present study showed that performance on the Switch task in
infancy is significantly related to later preschool performance on measures of language

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comprehension and production. The strength of the relationships observed, even in a

small sample of typically developing children, is promising. The current study points to
the need for a more comprehensive investigation to explore the possibility that the
minimal pair Switch task might be useful for early identification of language delay.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We would like to acknowledge the other members of the research team in an ongoing study
of prediction of language skills: Dr Carolyn Johnson and Dr Linda Siegel at the University of
British Columbia, and Dr Julianne Scott who has now joined the team. We would also like to
thank the families for their enthusiastic participation, and the speech-language therapists
who did the testing: Robyn Church, M.Sc., Bonnie Gairns, M.Sc. and Pauline Van Hemert,
M.Sc. This research was funded by the National Science and Engineering Research Council of
Canada, and the Ministry of Children and Family Development through the Human Early
Learning Partnership at the University of British Columbia.

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ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE

Professor Barbara May Bernhardt

School of Audiology and Speech Sciences, University of British Columbia,
5804 Fairview Avenue, Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6T 1Z3
E: bernharb@interchange.ubc.ca

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