About UK-CDI

Although babies and young toddlers know a lot about talking, we researchers know very little about this knowledge. That is why we need you!  As a parent, you know far more about your child than any test could ever reveal.

For this project, the first in this country, we need parents of children aged 8 to 18 months from all across the UK. We need these volunteer parents to tell us which words and gestures their children understand and say by filling in our new UK-CDI. We will then use this information to draw up a picture of children’s early language development across the country. This will have a big impact on our knowledge of development as well as enabling professionals to pick up on problems more easily in the future by comparing a child’s progress against national averages.

The first UK Communicative Development Inventory will establish:

  • the first comprehensive overview of UK children’s first stages in language development
  • the first word learning norms for children aged 8 to 18 months across the whole of the UK
  • a free-for-all, anonymised online child language base
  • a quick, easy and inexpensive checklist that can be used by professionals to assess children’s language.

This is collaborative research between the Universities of LancasterLiverpool and Lincoln, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

If you would like to publicise our study through your group or company, or if you would like to ask the researchers questions, please do get in touch with us.

This site is maintained by Kerstin Meints and Alan Woodford at the University of Lincoln, UK.