title: Establishing the norm of Cognitive Adaptive Test/Clinical Linguistic and Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS) in Chinese infants.
abstract: The Cognitive Adaptive Test/Clinical Linguistic and Auditory Milestone Scale (CAT/CLAMS) has been recommended as a useful diagnostic tool for cognitive delay. To provide wider application of this instrument as a general screening tool for pediatricians, a normative percentile graph from a large convenience sample of Chinese infants has been established. The effects of environmental factors on early language and adaptive development were also analyzed. A total of 402 normal infants aged 4 to 36 months attending well-child clinics were recruited. These infants were from all socioeconomic strata, and half were bilingual with Mandarin and Taiwanese. Grandmothers were the chief caretakers or co-caretakers in 28% of this population. The milestones were attained in a sequential and orderly fashion. In contrast to the adaptive ability, there was a wide variation in language acquisition between age 12 and 24 months. Multiple stepwise regression of demographic and environmental factors revealed that age was the main variance in CAT score (P = 0.0001). In CLAMS score, however, age and caretakers were the significant predictors (P = 0.0001). Infants cared for by both mothers and grandmothers had higher CLAMS score by two months over those cared by mothers only (P = 0.001). Those cared for by grandmothers only had lower language score than those by mothers only, though without statistical significance (P = 0.05). Bilingualism, birth order, numbers of siblings, familial structures, and parental socioeconomic status had no effect on early development.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Chang Gung Children's Hospital, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. huangped@mail.ncku.edu.tw
authors.forename: Y C
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: C C
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: S C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Hu
mesh_terms: D002668:Child Rearing; D002675:Child, Preschool; D002681:China; D002658:Developmental Disabilities / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000175:diagnosis*; D007805:Language Development Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D012016:Reference Values; D012931:Social Environment