IN THIS ISSUE:

My first real introduction to the LENA Foundation and LENA System happened in October 2008 when I was participating in the Inter Mountain Area Speech and Hearing (IMASH) Convention in Salt Lake City. I had seen the LENA display at the previous year's ASHA Convention but was not able to talk directly with anyone about LENA (there was a demonstration going on at the time and the booth was very crowded). However, IMASH provided me with an opportunity to talk with LENA representatives, who invited me to join the LENA team for dinner and a presentation. During the presentation I experienced an epiphany, and I have been hooked on LENA ever since.

That night at IMASH, the LENA Foundation provided us with technical reports and promotional materials, as well as answers to our many questions. Lively individual and group conversations abounded with the inherent capabilities and ultimate potential of the LENA System. I was interested in the outcome data that LENA researchers had found through multiple studies of parents and their children. In the technical report The Power of Talk, the LENA Foundation had confirmed the effects of parent talk on child talk, a dynamic that had initially been revealed in the groundbreaking 1995 study Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children. In addition, the LENA data had extended our understandings of how much talk varies through the typical day, how talk varies between individual adults and children, and how the amount of talk relates to child language developmental outcomes. We should not underestimate the importance of this work, which should be made widely available to parents, educators, and public policy makers.

In 2008, I was invited to join my colleagues Lloyd Hulit and Merle Howard as co-author of the fifth edition of Born to Talk, which will be published next month. During the research and writing process, LENA personnel provided exceptional assistance—granting permission for the use of LENA data, helping select partial transcripts of parents interacting with children, and offering publisher-quality tabular and graphic displays of data from several studies. All of this information is included in the textbook's fourth chapter, which is the introductory chapter on early language development.

With the inclusion of information on parent-child interactions and LENA research findings in the latest edition of Born to Talk, I hope to encourage students in speech-language pathology, audiology, early childhood education, special education, psychology, and related fields to work directly with parents and children to increase the quantity and quality of language that children are exposed to. The more we emphasize the power of talk to parents and educators, the greater our ability will be to make a big difference in the lives of the children we serve.

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Allen Fawcett admits he and his wife are mildly addicted to keeping track of their babies' schedules. The pair of economists have been recording every diaper, feeding and nap since they became parents.
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New Kids' Health Site Offers Advice From Pediatricians
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Seeking advice from pediatricians on your kids' health just got easier. The American Academy of Pediatrics today launched a website, healthychildren.org, in an effort to bring "pediatrician-approved health information" to the often-confusing world of online medical advice.
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UW study leads to IQ improvements in autistic children
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A study released by the UW Autism Center sets a new stage for early autism recognition, which can lead to higher IQs and increased social skills in autistic children.
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Autism seen as asset, not liability, in some jobs
By Chris Tachibana

Ron Brix's longtime job as a computer systems developer for Wrigley, the gum and candy maker, required intense attention to detail, single-minded focus and a willingness to work on something repetitively until perfect.
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