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Table 65: Change in MacArthur Bates vocabulary scores, wave 1 to wave 3, B cohort, per centWave 1 score quartilesQ1 Q2 Q3 Q4Wave 3 score quartiles:Q1 41.0 23.8 13.2 10.3Q2 28.6 32.6 27.6 15.4Q3 18.0 25.6 38.2 34.6Q4 12.4 18.0 21.1 39.7Total 100 100 100 100Families speaking more than one language in thehousehold were asked how often they spoke eachlanguage, rated from ‘lots’ to ‘never’. (Families speakingonly English were coded as speaking it ‘lots’.) Eighty-fiveper cent of families reported speaking English ‘lots’ in thehousehold, but again, this varied by LORI. In areas of noor low isolation, English was almost entirely spoken ‘lots’ inthe household, but in areas of moderate isolation it wasspoken ‘lots’ in 62 per cent of households and this figure fellto 35 per cent in areas of high isolation.Book reading is often linked to language development.Primary carers were asked whether someone in thehousehold had read a book to the study child in theprevious week. Overall, 82 per cent of families reportedreading to the child and this also varied by LORI; bookreading was more common in urban areas than remoteareas, although book-reading families were in the majorityacross all categories.Every year children’s English language development isassessed in Footprints in Time. Different assessments areconducted depending on the age of the child and thesegive the child a vocabulary score. The MacArthur BatesCommunicative Development Inventory is a vocabularymeasure for babies, in which primary carers view a wordlist and report whether their child says each word.Before looking at the relationship between languagedevelopment and language environment, it was importantto see how consistent (or persistent) these results were overtime. For most children, the language environment will notchange dramatically in their early years, but children doprogress at different paces, so before drawing too manyconclusions, it was necessary to know whether manychildren who got a low score in one year were likely toget a much higher score the following year or vice versa.This table compares wave 1 B cohort MacArthur Batesvocabulary scores with their wave 3 scores (two yearslater), based on where the scores fell in comparison to theother children in the sample, by quartile (Table 65). Closeto 40 per cent of children were in the same quartile in bothwaves. Moreover, if they did go up or down, their scoreswere more likely to go up or down by one quartile than bytwo or three (Table 65 and Table 66). This shows quite strongconsistency in scores over time.Table 66: Proportions of children showing an improvementor a decline in their vocabulary score quartiles fromwave 1 to wave 3Quartile changePer cent-3 3.1-2 9.4-1 19.0No change 37.81 21.42 6.93 2.5Total 100Footprints in Time: The Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children | Key Summary Report from Wave 379