Parent education to improve early language development: A preliminary evaluation of LENA Start<sup>TM</sup>

Elmquist, Marianne; Finestack, Lizbeth H.; Kriese, Amanda; Lease, Erin M.; McConnell, Scott R.

doi:10.1017/s0305000920000458

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(50 reference statements)

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“…The primary objective of the LENA system is to provide users (e.g., parents, educators, researchers) with a tool for describing children's natural language environments without requiring any technical expertise nor access to computing resources. The LENA Foundation offers a variety of programs catered to the specific needs of its consumers, such as educational programming for parents (LENA Start) and educators (LENA Grow) that instruct users on how to use the recording device and software to track their own language usage around children (Elmquist et al, 2021). The LENA Foundation also offers a cloud-based processing system (LENA SP) for researchers who wish to collect and process data from multiple sites.…”

Section: Two Systems For Long-form Recordingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Long-form recordings to study children’s language input and output in under-resourced contexts

Coffey,

Cristia

2024

Preprint

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A growing body of research suggests that young children’s early speech and language exposure is associated withlater language development (including delays and diagnoses), school readiness, and academic performance. The last decade has seen increasing use of child-worn devices to collect long-form audio recordings by educators, economists, and developmental psychologists. The most commonly used system for analyzing this data is LENA, which was trained on North American English child-centered data and generates estimates of children’s speech-like vocalization counts, adult word counts, and child-adult turn counts. Recently, cheaper and open-source non-LENA alternatives with multilingual training have been proposed. Both kinds of systems have been employed in under-resourced, sometimes multilingual contexts, including Africa, where access to printed or digital linguistic resources may be limited. In this paper, we describe each kind of system (LENA, non-LENA), provide information on audio data collected with them that is available for reuse, review evidence of the accuracy of extant automated analyses, andnote potential strengths and shortcomings of their use in African communities.

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Section: Two Systems For Long-form Recordingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…LENA is a flexible system, with use cases in basic research (Weisleder and Fernald, 2013;Romeo et al, 2018), early diagnosis of developmental disorders or delay (Richards et al, 2010), and early childhood intervention (Wong et al, 2018;Ferjan Ramírez et al, 2019;Elmquist et al, 2021).…”

Section: Uses Of the Lena System And Available Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Long-form recordings to study children’s language input and output in under-resourced contexts

Coffey,

Cristia

2024

Preprint

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“…The importance of the physical and social/communicative context to language development is shown in the success of intervention studies that manipulate the context. It has been found that directing the parent to increase utterance input, respond to the child's lead, and create opportunities for language learning (interactive book reading, direct teaching of vocabulary and narrative skills) can improve language learning outcomes (Beecher & Van Pay, 2020;Burgoyne et al, 2018;Elmquist et al, 2020;Fricke et al, 2017).…”

Section: Language and Conceptual Acquisition Are Necessarily Situated...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Consensus Paper: Situated and Embodied Language Acquisition

Reggin,

Gómez Franco,

Horchak

et al. 2023

Journal of Cognition

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Theories of embodied cognition postulate that perceptual, sensorimotor, and affective properties of concepts support language learning and processing. In this paper, we argue that language acquisition, as well as processing, is situated in addition to being embodied. In particular, first, it is the situated nature of initial language development that affords for the developing system to become embodied. Second, the situated nature of language use changes across development and adulthood. We provide evidence from empirical studies for embodied effects of perception, action, and valence as they apply to both embodied cognition and situated cognition across developmental stages. Although the evidence is limited, we urge researchers to consider differentiating embodied cognition within situated context, in order to better understand how these separate mechanisms interact for learning to occur. This delineation also provides further clarity to the study of classroom-based applications and the role of embodied and situated cognition in the study of developmental disorders. We argue that theories of language acquisition need to address for the complex situated context of real-world learning by completing a "circular notion": observing experimental paradigms in realworld settings and taking these observations to later refine lab-based experiments.

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“…Both systems include online project management and database-reporting systems in support of monitoring project progress and usability and scaling up individual users. Beecher and Van Pay ( 2020 ) reported a successful application of LENA Start delivered to parents in a library context, and Elmquist et al ( 2020 ) reported preliminary findings from a community-based parenting program.…”

Section: Interventions At the Child/family Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Progress Toward a Multisectoral Community Intervention Approach to Prevention of the Word Gap

et al. 2021

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Children learn language through the interactions they have with their parents/caregivers beginning at birth. Hart and Risley ( 1995 ) discovered an inequity in the home language input children received from parents/caregivers. Children reared in low-income families received less input (conversations, turns) from parents than did children reared in more advantaged families. Less language input was linked to a disparity in children’s vocabulary learning by age 3. The long-term result of this social determinant of early language/literacy learning is a life trajectory of poor educational, economic, and health attainment for many children in families with limited resources, at vast cost to individuals, communities, and the nation. What is needed is an approach to word-gap prevention that is capable of achieving positive individual, community, and population outcomes. Translating research into practice, we developed the Bridging the Word Gap Community Action Planning Guide (BWG-CAPG) using a combined behavior-analytic, community psychology, and public health framework for this purpose (Greenwood et al., 2017 ). We also developed a progress-monitoring measure, the online BWG Community Check Box Evaluation System, to provide feedback on a community’s actions and progress in implementing their plan. Results from an initial pilot investigation within and across three community sectors in a large urban city were promising. BWG Community Check Box results indicated a number of desired outcomes: (a) capacity development and mobilization, (b) community implementation actions, and (c) community changes in practices, programs, and policies. Implications are discussed.

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Parent education to improve early language development: A preliminary evaluation of LENA Start^TM

Cited by 8 publications

References 36 publications

Long-form recordings to study children’s language input and output in under-resourced contexts

Long-form recordings to study children’s language input and output in under-resourced contexts

Consensus Paper: Situated and Embodied Language Acquisition

Progress Toward a Multisectoral Community Intervention Approach to Prevention of the Word Gap

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Parent education to improve early language development: A preliminary evaluation of LENA StartTM

Cited by 8 publications

References 36 publications

Long-form recordings to study children’s language input and output in under-resourced contexts

Long-form recordings to study children’s language input and output in under-resourced contexts

Consensus Paper: Situated and Embodied Language Acquisition

Progress Toward a Multisectoral Community Intervention Approach to Prevention of the Word Gap

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Product

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Parent education to improve early language development: A preliminary evaluation of LENA Start^TM