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Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs, parent-completed language development checklists) are a helpful tool to assess language in children who are unused to interaction with unfamiliar adults. Generally, CDIs are completed in written form, but in developing country settings parents may have insufficient literacy to complete them alone. We designed CDIs to assess language development in children aged 0;8 to 2;4 in two languages used in Coastal communities in Kenya. Measures of vocabulary, gestures, and grammatical constructions were developed using both interviews with parents from varying backgrounds, and vocabulary as well as grammatical constructions from recordings of children's spontaneous speech. The CDIs were then administered in interview format to over 300 families. Reliability and validity ranged from acceptable to excellent, supporting the use of CDIs when direct language testing is impractical, even when children have multiple caregivers and where respondents have low literacy levels.

Background: HIV infection has been associated with impaired language development in prenatally exposed children. Although most of the burden of HIV occurs in sub-Saharan Africa, there have not been any comprehensive studies of HIV exposure on multiple aspects of language development using instruments appropriate for the population. Methods: We compared language development in children exposed to HIV in utero to community controls (N = 262, 8-30 months) in rural Kenya, using locally adapted and validated communicative development inventories. Results: The mean score of the younger HIV-exposed uninfected infants (8-15 months) was not significantly below that of the controls; however older HIV-exposed uninfected children had significantly poorer language scores, with HIV positive children scoring more poorly than community controls, on several measures. Conclusions: Our preliminary data indicates that HIV infection is associated with impaired early language development, and that the methodology developed would be responsive to a more detailed investigation of the variability in outcome amongst children exposed to HIV, irrespective of their infection status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. A strong link between phonological awareness (PA) and literacy exists, but the origins of this link are difficult to investigate, since PA skills are hard to test in young, pre-literate children, and many studies neither include such children nor report children's initial literacy levels. Aims. To examine PA and literacy in children who are attending or not attending school in rural East Africa. Sample. One hundred and eight children ages 7-10 years, with no education, or in grade 1 or 2, randomly selected from a community survey of all children in this age group. Methods. PA skill, reading, cognitive abilities, and socio-economic status were examined. Results. Implicit and explicit PA skill with small or large units is related to letter reading ability, and this effect is independent of age, schooling, and cognitive ability. Some PA tasks are performed above chance levels by children who cannot recognize single letters. Conclusions. Basic PA develops prior to the attainment of literacy, and learning to read improves PA both quantitatively and qualitatively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]