toddler cultural inventories?

[Margaret Fleck]

Some nouns on the MacArthur CDI (or similar lists) refer to objects that are
arguably universal in American culture (e.g. toes).  However, others refer
to objects that might be systematically absent (e.g. houses in some areas
routinely lack basements, grandparents often live far away, the circus
never comes to rural areas) or are seasonal (e.g. snow, pumpkin, pool).
Although this correlates with factors like geographical location, it's
hard to do exact predictions (e.g. some kids from warm areas go on
ski holidays).

Has anyone experimented with a cultural inventory checkoff similar to
the CDI?  E.g. for a suitable subset of the CDI nouns (e.g. there's
no point in asking about "toes"), ask the parent to choose whether

  -- the child regularly encounters the object
  -- the child encounters the object but only rarely, or has encountered it
     in the past but not recently
  -- the child is acquainted with the object almost exclusively via books,
     movies, etc

In combination with the CDI, this might allow one to explore how much
individual variation in word learning is heavily influenced by availability
of the corresponding objects.  Especially if the checklists were repeated
over time, so that one could track the appearance of new items.

???

Margaret
  (Margaret Fleck)


=====
Margaret M. Fleck
    510-378-3075
    margaretmfleck at yahoo.com