Announcements and News

June 2017:

May 2017:

April 2017:

  • The Advisory Board is calling for researchers to join our English-language renorming effort. We plan to collect data using web-based administration during 2017 through early 2018. Please fill out the form to let us know your interest and we will be in touch soon!

    Complete the form here!

September 2016:

  • The Advisory Board is pleased to announce the availability of English Words & Gestures, Words & Sentences, and CDI III in fillable PDF format! Like the short forms, parents can fill out the classic MacArthur-Bates instruments on their own laptops or computers using Adobe Reader. Exporting the data requires Adobe Acrobat. Now available from Brookes Publishing. Click the links below to learn more!

    Words & Gestures

    Words & Sentences

    CDI III

July 2016:

  • The Advisory Board is saddened to announce the death of our longtime colleague and friend, J. Steven Reznick. Steve was a gifted and generous teacher, researcher, mentor, collaborator and friend. Learn more about Steve's life here.

December 2015:

  • Now available! Fillable pdfs of the English and Spanish short forms! All forms can be downloaded and emailed to parents to complete on their own computers or tablets. Users should advise parents that they will need the latest version of Adobe Reader (Version X or higher) to save the completed forms and email them back to you. Exporting the data is easy (csv) using Adobe Acrobat. There is a $10 license fee per form, plus 30 cents per anticipated number of administrations. To order, contact Larry Fenson.

November 2015:

  • The MacArthur-Bates CDI Advisory Board is pleased to announce the availability of downloadable fillable pdf versions of the English-language Short Forms! These can be downloaded and emailed to parents to complete on their own computers or tablets. Users should advise parents that they will need the latest version of Adobe Reader (Version X or higher) to save the completed forms and email them back to you. To export the data into csv format for scoring, users will need to purchase Adobe Acrobat, which is available for academic discount through most institutions. The fillable forms can be ordered through Larry Fenson.

June 2014:

  • We are pleased to announce a new project, Wordbank, an open database for storing information about children's vocabulary growth using the MacArthur-Bates CDIs in many different languages. See our website for information about our progress and find out how you can contribute your data!

March 2014:

  • The MacArthur-Bates CDI Advisory Board is pleased to announce that two new members have joined the board, Dr. Margaret Friend (SDSU) and Dr. Michael Frank (Stanford University). Welcome Maggie and Mike!

October 2013:

  • To mark the 25th anniversary of the work of the MacArthur-Bates CDI Advisory Board, we have placed the entire norming dataset in the public domain, now downloadable here and directly through the CHILDES website. This dataset is available in both SPSS and Excel formats. Please contact Philip Dale or Virginia Marchman with any questions.

  • An updated version of the CDI Scoring Program is now available: