Using LENA Pro to Help Measure Two Comprehensive Treatment Models for Preschool-Aged Children with Autism
As the number of children being diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically over the past decade so has the quantity of new autism treatment methods. However, two models for treating and educating preschoolers with autism have been in use for decades: the Treatment and Education of Autistic and related Communication-handicapped CHildren (TEACCH) program and the Learning Experiences: Alternative Programs for Preschoolers and Parents (LEAP) program. With the former dating to the mid sixties and the later established in the early eighties, the treatment models were around when autism was still considered a rare developmental disorder.
In brief, TEACCH adapts the classroom environment to support the educational and learning styles favored by children with autism, such as their preference for visual processing of information; children with autism often are in classrooms with other children with autism; and a special education teacher acts as the primary instructor. On the other hand, the LEAP model structures the classroom to be similar to those of typically developing children; children with autism interact with typically developing children; and a special education teacher works with traditional teachers.
To compare the relative efficacy of the two programs in improving social and language skills, my colleague Sam Odom, Ph.D., and I have been collaborating with researchers in Colorado, Florida, and Minnesota on a four-year, federally funded study, “The Comparison of Two Comprehensive Treatment Models for Preschool-Aged Children with Autism and Their Families.” The study, now in its third year, will involve approximately 75 preschool classrooms in the abovementioned states and is unique in a number of ways. In autism studies, it is the first to study the comparative efficacy of existing comprehensive treatment models; moreover, it is one of the largest studies ever conducted on behavioral interventions in general.
The study is also unique because we have been using LENA Pro to measure how children’s language production changes over time in classroom settings. For one day in the spring and one day in the fall, each study participant dons the LENA Clothing and LENA DLP. Although we have incorporated other traditional psychometric assessments into the study, we felt that it was important to utilize LENA to capture real-time data from the naturalistic classroom environment, where children are interacting with one another as well as teachers and parents, which can generate a lot of background noise. In this challenging recording environment, not only does LENA compile estimates of the number of child vocalizations, adult words, and adult-child conversational interactions, it also helps us assess the amount of speech overlap and extraneous electronic sounds—factors that could be affecting learning potential.
LENA has proven helpful in many ways. However, one of the characteristics of the technology that was a little unexpected but that has really impressed us is its ease of use. All we have to do is have a study participant wear the DLP during the school day and then hook the DLP up to a PC to generate an amazing amount of data, which can be quickly exported to a Microsoft Excel file. It has proven to be an amazingly fast and easy means of obtaining totally objective information from children’s natural environments.
The longitudinal study won’t be finished until next year. But once it is and we have more time to assess the information we’ve gathered, we anticipate that the LENA data will provide some interesting answers on how the language outcomes of the study participants differ in the TEACCH and LEAP programs.
In the meantime, we have used LENA in a small sample study to collect some preliminary data from children with autism. The data, gathered from preschools in one county in North Carolina, show low rates of child vocalizations and conversational turns for children with autism and point to a correlation between baseline cognitive abilities and a child’s exposure to adult words. I and other researchers will expand on these findings this month at the Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities in Annapolis, Maryland. Our presentation is scheduled for Thursday, March 18. We hope to see you there.
Brian Boyd, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Allied Health Sciences, Division of Occupational Science, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Communication Disorders Quarterly recently accepted two LENA studies for publication.
In one of the studies, University of Memphis professor D. Kimbrough Oller, Ph.D., used LENA to capture and study the natural language environment of a two-year-old child living in a household where she was exposed to three languages: English, Spanish, and German. The results, presented in the paper “All-Day Recordings to Investigate Vocabulary Development: A Case Study of a Trilingual Toddler,” reveal that language spoken directly to the child was more influential in building vocabulary than audible language not spoken directly to the child. Click here to read the abstract.
The other study was led by Charles R. Greenwood, Ph.D., director of the Juniper Gardens Children’s Project at the University of Kansas; he used LENA to follow up on Hart and Risley’s findings, published in the mid nineties. The paper, “Assessing Children’s Home Language Environments Using Automatic Speech Recognition Technology,” reaffirms Hart and Risley’s results concerning significant disparities in the home language environments of typically developing children in mid- to upper-SES families. It also shows that automated processing compared well with the estimates that Hart and Risley generated originally through a laborious manual transcription process.
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OPTION Schools is dedicated to offering schools and programs services that help children who are deaf or hard of hearing to listen and talk. In addition to keynote speakers presenting on nonprofit operations, the meeting will offer opportunities for group discussion on a variety of topics and a sharing session for discussing best practices.
The International Society on Infant Studies (ISIS) presents the Biennial International Conference on Infant Studies as an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to congregate and discuss new research and theories in the field of infant development.
The largest technical conference in the world focused on signal processing and its applications, ICASSP features speakers, tutorials, exhibits and more than 120 lecture and poster sessions. On Wednesday, March 17, LENA Foundation Manager of Software and Language Engineering Dongxin Xu, Ph.D., and LENA Foundation Scientific Advisor John H.L. Hansen, Ph.D., will present the Show and Tell demonstration “LENA: The Language ENvironment Analysis System for Children of 0–4 Years Old.”
The Gatlinburg Conference is one of the leading conferences in the country for behavioral scientists engaged in research in intellectual and related developmental disabilities. This year’s theme is “Fragile X Syndrome: Frontiers of Behavior and Biology.”
On Thursday, March 18, researchers using the LENA System will be participating in a symposium session titled “Automated Measurement of the Vocal Behavior and Language Environments of Children with ASD: Research and Clinical Implications.” The three-part session includes one presentation from foundation scientists, one presentation on ongoing research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and one presentation on research out of the University of Kansas.
The DeVault Otologic Research Laboratory Colloquium Series is an opportunity for researchers from around the world to present on interesting and important contemporary topics. At the March 31 colloquium, LENA Foundation Language Research Director Jill Gilkerson, Ph.D., will present “Using Speech Recognition Technology to Automatically Analyze the Natural Language Environment of Young Children.”
This spring, experts in fields ranging from audiology and speech-language pathology to child psychology and pediatrics will gather in the Mile High City for the First LENA Users Conference. The forum will enable researchers to share their findings and offer an opportunity for those new to the LENA System to learn more about the technology.
The AG Bell conference not only provides information on hearing health and technology but also presentations on the latest research in hearing loss.
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