Wordbank: An Open Repository for Developmental Vocabulary Data

学习语言是人类最令人印象深刻和最有趣的成就之一。早期的语言技能为后来的认知发展和学术成就奠定了基础。这个项目的目标是为对典型和非典型语言发展感兴趣的研究人员开发一个强大的工具，以更好地了解幼儿的最早语言。 这个工具被称为Wordbank，是一个关于儿童词汇的父母报告的结构化数据库，它结合了父母完成的数万份报告，这些报告的孩子参加了儿童发展研究。Wordbank将包括来自数十个国家的研究实验室的数据，这些数据是多年来收集的，包括世界上许多语言。这个数据库将有助于了解跨语言和文化的普遍趋势，以及探索个别儿童在语言发展方面可能存在差异的原因。如此丰富的信息来源将允许在较小的样本中无法发现的新见解。Wordbank将利用MacArthur-Bates沟通发展量表（CDIs），这是一种广泛使用的家长报告工具，旨在方便和廉价地收集有关儿童早期语言习得的数据。Wordbank将把跨语言和实验室的CDI数据存档在一个逐项格式的关系数据库中。该网站建立在开源分析工具的基础上，将提供深入的探索性可视化，并促进数据的生产性再利用。除了用于探索的交互界面外，该网站还将使研究人员能够直接连接到基础数据库。其结果将是一个资源，使新发现的早期语言跨越各种学科。

Learning language is one of the most impressive and intriguing human accomplishments. Early language skills set the stage for later cognitive development and academic achievement. The goal of this project is to develop a powerful tool for researchers interested in typical and atypical language development to better understand young children's earliest language. This tool, called Wordbank, is a structured database of parent reports about children's vocabulary that combines tens of thousands of reports completed by parents whose children have participated in child development research. Wordbank will include data from research laboratories in dozens of countries, collected over many years and including many of the world's languages. This database will be useful for understanding generalizable trends across languages and cultures as well as exploring reasons that individual children might differ in their language development. Such a rich source of information will allow for novel insights that could not be discovered in smaller samples. Wordbank will make use of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs), a widely-used family of parent-report instruments that are designed for easy and inexpensive data-gathering about children's early language acquisition. Wordbank will archive CDI data across languages and labs in an item-by-child format relational database. Built on open-source analytic tools, the site will host in-depth exploratory visualizations and facilitate the productive reuse of data. In addition to an interactive interface for exploration, the website will also allow researchers to connect directly to the underlying database. The result will be a resource that enables new discoveries about early language across a variety of disciplines.