LENA Language and Autism Screen (LLAS).

A three-part assessment for children ages 24-48 months, the LLAS enables you to:

  • Detect language delays. We measure your child's expressive and receptive language skills—based on your answers to a 52-item parent questionnaire—and provide you with a language development age and determine if a language delay may be present. If your child’s developmental age is less than 75 percent of his or her chronological age we will run an additional analysis on the recorded vocalizations of your child to provide a second layer of analysis. To view the 52-item questionnaire – click here.

  • Assess the quality of your child's language environment. We measure the number of adult words spoken to and near your child; determine the number of conversational interactions your child has with adults; and rate the quality of your child's audio environment. (Please remember, we do not look at the content of the recording, what was said or who is speaking.)

    The key language environment statistics we will report are:

         Adult Words: The number of adult words spoken to the child during the recorded  
         time period and the corresponding percentile information.
         Conversational Turns: The number of conversational turns, or vocal interactions  
         between adult and child, during the recorded time period and the corresponding
         percentile information.
         Child Vocalizations: The number of vocalizations spoken by your child during the
         recorded time period and the corresponding percentile information.
         Television: The number of hours or minutes that your child was exposed to
         television during the recorded time period and the corresponding percentile 
         information.

         Percentile information is calculated by comparing the language environment data to a
         research sample of 329 families.

  • Automatically and objectively screen for autism. After analyzing your child's vocalizations, we provide a score and probability for the likelihood of autism.

    Research has shown that children with autism produce sound patterns that are different from typically developing children. Using sophisticated acoustic algorithms, we break down your child’s vocalizations into 46 unique phone and non-phone categories. By examining these categories, we can detect if the vocalizations contain anomalies similar to the vocalizations of children with autism. Additionally, we use a statistical method to analyze the sound distribution of the vocalizations. Once this analysis is completed, we provide you with an autism score within a range of 1-7, indicating whether a child is at-risk for autism. To view a sample of the Autism Score Chart – click here.