A scale for how "chatty" a preschooler is?

[Barbara Pearson]

Dear Infochildes,

I've had a question from a colleague that has me stumped.  I hope you  
have some suggestions for her.

Is there some formal measure of how verbose a preschool child is?

She is doing sleep research and for a grant proposal is trying to  
follow up on a comment from teachers and parents that "some kids are  
highly verbal and they
tend to be harder to get to sleep."

"Highly verbal" in this case is not a value judgment about the child's  
language sophistication, just how *much* they talk.

I suggested that Betty Hart's 2nd book, the "Social World of Children  
Learning to Talk" had graphs that quantified "voluble," "average," and  
"taciturn" levels for parents and child separately up to 36 months.   
Or I think she could use LENA to quantify the percentage of a fixed  
time a child talks--

But it's not the focus of the research:  she doesn't want to record or  
transcribe.
She was hoping there was a scale that she could give to teachers or  
parents; or possibly a short-term observation protocol that someone  
has codified.

Any suggestions for her??!

Thank you in advance.

Best wishes,

Barbara Pearson

************************************************
Barbara Zurer Pearson, Ph.D.
Research Associate, Depts of Linguistics and   Communication Disorders
c/o 226 South College
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst MA 01003

bpearson at research.umass.edu
http://www.umass.edu/aae/bp_indexold.htm
http://www.zurer.com/pearson

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