The Communicative Intention Inventory: A system for observing and coding children's early intentional communication

Abstract

ABSTRACT The Communicative Intention Inventory, an observational system for describing children's early gestural, vocal, and verbal communicative behaviors, is presented in this paper. The Inventory is comprised of eight intentional categories which are included because of their content and construct validity, their likelihood of occurrence in a clinical setting, and their high observerscorer reliability. The rank order of frequency of occurrence of the eight intentional categories is compared across 16 subjects resulting in a reliability coefficient of .66. The value of using the Inventory as a criterion-referenced measure of communicative intentions is explored.