BabyLex app for iPhone and iPad

We are parents and know how much fun it is to follow the development of your child.

We are also researchers in child psychology and thus we have developed an app to estimate your toddler’s vocabulary size.

Using the BabyLex app you can follow the development of your child by completing the test as often as you like and seeing how your child’s vocabulary has increased. The test currently allows you to follow your monolingual toddler in English from 16 to 30 months of age, in German from 18 to 30 months of age, or in Norwegian from 18 to 36 months of age.

Once you have completed the test, you will see the result informing you the number of words your child likely produces from the long version of the vocabulary questionnaire (in other words, your child will likely produce that many words or more) and also a percentile score of your child – how she/he compares with other children of the same sex and age.

We hope you have fun with this app – and we hope it helps you follow your child’s development in the same way we have followed ours!

The research: The BabyLex app features a novel approach that allows researchers and parents to assess reliably a child’s vocabulary within 2 minutes (as opposed to up to 45 minutes for full-sized tests). The research behind the algorithm can be accessed here and has been developed jointly with the universities of Oslo and Göttingen. Further information can be accessed on www.babylex.eu .

Note: it is an estimate so if you complete the test too soon after you completed a previous one, it is possible that the score may also go down. Don’t worry! This doesn’t mean your child has forgotten words – there is a margin of error for the estimate, i.e., a range where the app can make inaccuracies, and when you test the same child in shorter intervals, it is likely that the vocabulary estimate falls within this margin of error. That doesn’t mean you can’t test the same child – please do so, but this is just to say don’t worry!

Don’t also worry if your child doesn’t say most of the words on the list – the words are chosen at random and are not tailored to the capabilities of particular age-groups. So, it is just as likely that your child knows all the words on the list or none of the words on the list depending on how old s/he is and what words were randomly chosen by the app to test. We will still be able to provide a reliable estimate of your child’s vocabulary.

Important disclaimer: This is merely an estimate provided by the app. It is not a clinical evaluation of your child’s language development. We are not doctors, we are researchers who are also parents and want to use our research to allow parents an insight into the development of their child. If you want a clinical evaluation of your child, please ask your pediatrician for contacts to the clinicians who can provide you such an evaluation.