Observed and reported expressive vocabulary and word combinations in bilingual toddlers

The consistency of parental reports of expressive vocabulary and word combi nations with observed expressive language among 21- to 27-month-old childre n exposed to English and Spanish on a regular basis was the Focus of this i nvestigation. Parental reports were obtained using the Spanish-English Voca bulary Checklist (Patterson, 1998), an adaptation of the Language Developme nt Survey (Rescorla, 1989). The number of different words parents reported was correlated (r = .66) with the number of different words the children us ed during a 30-min videotaped interaction with the reporting parent. Parent al reports of whether the child was combining words and estimates of propor tion of the child's use of Spanish and English also were consistent with th e children's language use during the 30-min language samples.