ArticleAutism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research2019
How effective is LENA in detecting speech vocalizations and language produced by children and adolescents with ASD in different contexts?
Article in Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- The use of Language ENvironment Analysis in autism research: A systematic review.Autism : the international journal of research and practice · 2025Pooled it
- Accuracy of the Language Environment Analysis System Segmentation and Metrics: A Systematic Review.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2020Pooled it
- How auditory rhythm perception shapes speech production: The influence of neural synchronization and rhythmic patterns.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Performance and Biases of the LENA and ACLEW Algorithms in Analyzing Language Environments in Down, Fragile X, Angelman Syndromes, and Populations at Elevated Likelihood for Autism.Developmental science · 2026Article
- Use of Automation Technologies and Data Mining in Speech Recognition for Autism.Brain and behavior · 2026Review
- Conversation Initiation in Families With a Toddler Who Is Deaf or Hard of Hearing.American journal of speech-language pathology · 2025Article
- Validation of the Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) Automated Speech Processing Algorithm Labels for Adult and Child Segments in a Sample of Families From India.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2025Article
- Adaptive thresholding increases sensitivity to detect changes in the rate of skin conductance responses to psychologically arousing stimuli in both laboratory and ambulatory settings.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2024Article
- The Stability and Validity of Automated Indices of Vocal Development in Infants With Autistic and Non-Autistic Siblings.Journal of speech, language, and hearing research : JSLHR · 2023Article
- Conversation Initiation of Mothers, Fathers, and Toddlers in their Natural Home Environment.Computer speech & language · 2022Article
- Say that again: Quantifying patterns of production for children with autism using recurrence analysis.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Vocal development in a large-scale crosslinguistic corpus.Developmental science · 2021Article
- Drug development for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD): Progress, challenges, and future directions.European neuropsychopharmacology : the journal of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2021Review
- Pre- and Paralinguistic Vocal Production in ASD: Birth Through School Age.Current psychiatry reports · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The LENA system was designed and validated to provide information about the language environment in children 0 to 4 years of age and its use has been expanded to populations with a number of communication profiles. Its utility in children 5 years of age and older is not yet known. The present study used acoustic data from two samples of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to evaluate the reliability of LENA automated analyses for detecting speech utterances in older, school age children, and adolescents with ASD, in clinic and home environments. Participants between 5 and 18 years old who were minimally verbal (study 1) or had a range of verbal abilities (study 2) completed standardized assessments in the clinic (study 1 and 2) and in the home (study 2) while speech was recorded from a LENA device. We compared LENA segment labels with manual ground truth coding by human transcribers using two different methods. We found that the automated LENA algorithms were not successful (<50% reliable) in detecting vocalizations from older children and adolescents with ASD, and that the proportion of speaker misclassifications by the automated system increased significantly with the target-child's age. The findings in children and adolescents with ASD suggest possibly misleading results when expanding the use of LENA beyond the age ranges for which it was developed and highlight the need to develop novel automated methods that are more appropriate for older children. Autism Research 2019, 12: 628-635. © 2019 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc. LAY SUMMARY: Current commercially available speech detection algorithms (LENA system) were previously validated in toddlers and children up to 48 months of age, and it is not known whether they are reliable in older children and adolescents. Our data suggest that LENA does not adequately capture speech in school age children and adolescents with autism and highlights the need to develop new automated methods for older children.
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Registered trials
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