Examining the Lexical Development of Multilingual Children in Ghana Using an Adapted Vocabulary Checklist

Abstract

We examine vocabulary growth in children aged 14 to 25 months in Ghana (n = 937) using a novel 88-word parent report vocabulary checklist developed with assistance from local consultants. The measure was designed to assess the downstream impacts of an earlier high school education intervention children’s parents had enrolled in as adolescents. Most children were spoken to in a dialect of Akan; half had exposure to at least one other language, most commonly English. Children’s primary caregivers were read a list of 88 vocabulary items in their native language and asked to indicate which items their children say or understand. Caregiver responses were found to have high internal consistency and most items were effective at distinguishing children by ability. Vocabulary size was significantly and positively related to age, female gender, exposure to multiple languages, and caregiver engagement in stimulating activities, but no significant associations with birth order, caregiver education, or living in an urban setting were found. Children’s vocabulary composition underwent predictable changes over time: children with lower vocabularies tended to know words for people and social routines, while children with higher vocabularies knew more predicates and closed-class items. Nouns were over-represented in children’s vocabularies, suggesting the presence of a noun bias. Our results suggest that children in Ghana undergo many similar patterns of development in vocabulary growth as have been found in other languages, reaffirming the usefulness of caregiver-reported language assessments as a tool for studying language acquisition across cultural contexts.