Listening in on the Mouths of Babes
Infoture, a Boulder-based company, has created the LENA (for “language environment analysis”) which is (reports the February 24th New York Times magazine) means to be a kind of “verbal thermometer” to help parents better gauge how baby’s language skills are developing.
A voice recorder tucked into a child’s clothing records all the sounds in the environment. At the end of each day, special software evaluates both the amount of exposure the child has had to verbal stimulation as well as the child’s own utterances. Ultimately, the device generates percentile rankings that help assess a child’s language development, just as doctors provide such rankings for a child’s height, weight and head circumference.
Whatever its merits, LENA represents a radically new way of assessing language development. Doctors initially judge a child’s skills by asking parents about what a child can do. Kids with clear difficulties are referred to a speech pathologist for a more detailed evaluation. By contrast, Infoture would allow parents to monitor their kids more precisely and on their own. But is LENA necessary? Some linguists worry that the technology is more likely to raise false anxieties than to assuage genuine ones.
Interesting—makes me wonder if something like the LENA might be a way to further evaluate language and speech in a child who (like my son Charlie) is not reaching developmental milestones in these areas?
(Actually, Charlie was late on all of his developmental milestones—rolling over at 9 months, walking at 16, never crawling until after he walked.)
Tags: asd, asperger, autism, Baby, children, infany, Language, milestone, Parenting, pdd-nos, Technology, wordsRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Baby, Language, Parenting, Technology
2 opinions for Listening in on the Mouths of Babes
grenouille
Feb 25, 2008 at 5:39 pm
I started getting brochures in the mail for LENA about a year ago.
The slick mailings and slogans were pushing the system not as a way of determining whether your child is behind, but as a way to push him or her into precociousness.
Perhaps they have re-tooled their message since then. It was very expensive, from what I recall–maybe the pushy mother market was harder to reach than they anticipated!
Kristina Chew, PhD
Feb 25, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I was kind of suspecting LENA might be such a product. The tone in the NYTimes article was somewhat of the sense that this products will help you keep an eye on your child’s language development and hopefully “something” won’t result.
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