ArticleDevelopmental review : DR2020
A meta-analysis of the predictability of LENA™ automated measures for child language development.
Article in Developmental review : DR, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 117 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
- The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA) System in Toddlers With Early Indicators of Autism: Test-Retest Reliability and Convergent Validity With Clinical Language Assessments.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2025Trial
- Trial
- Classification errors distort findings in automated speech processing: Examples and solutions from child-development research.Behavior research methods · 2026Article
- Early child measures outpredict input measures of preschool language skills in U.S. English learners.Developmental psychology · 2026Article
- Caregiver mental health is associated with early childhood language outcomes and perception bias in rural China.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Beyond adult speech: why research on language development should consider speech from children.Child development perspectives · 2026Article
- Article
- Establishing the reliability of metrics extracted from long-form recordings using LENA and the ACLEW pipeline.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- A Feasibility Study of a Music Enrichment Program on Relative Reinforcing Value of Food and Home Environmental Enrichment among Families of Low Socioeconomic Status.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Environmental contributions to cognitive development: The role of cognitive stimulation.Developmental review : DR · 2024Article
- The Combined Contributions of Newborn Stress and Parenting Stress on Toddler Language Development.The Journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- Evaluating Users' Experiences of a Child Multimodal Wearable Device: Mixed Methods Approach.JMIR human factors · 2024Article
- Preliminary Technical Validation of LittleBeats™: A Multimodal Sensing Platform to Capture Cardiac Physiology, Motion, and Vocalizations.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Everyday language input and production in 1,001 children from six continents.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Fathers' unmodulated prosody in child-directed speech.The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2023Article
- Mixed-Language Input and Infant Volubility: Friend or Foe?Bilingualism (Cambridge, England) · 2023Article
- Automated measurement: The need for a more objective view of the speech and language of autistic children.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2023Article
- Auditory chaos classification in real-world environments.Frontiers in digital health · 2023Article
- Factors of parental investment in the home language environment in peri-urban China: A mixed methods study.PloS one · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Early language environment plays a critical role in child language development. The Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA™) system allows researchers and clinicians to collect daylong recordings and obtain automated measures to characterize a child's language environment. This meta-analysis evaluates the predictability of LENA's automated measures for language skills in young children. We systematically searched reports for associations between LENA's automated measures, specifically, adult word count (AWC), conversational turn count (CTC), and child vocalization count (CVC), and language skills in children younger than 48 months. Using robust variance estimation, we calculated weighted mean effect sizes and conducted moderator analyses exploring the factors that might affect this relationship. The results revealed an overall medium effect size for the correlation between LENA's automated measures and language skills. This relationship was largely consistent regardless of child developmental status, publication status, language assessment modality and method, or the age at which the LENA recording was taken; however, the effect was weakly moderated by the gap between LENA recordings and language measures taken. Among the three measures, there were medium associations between CTC and CVC and language, whereas there was a small-to-medium association between AWC and language. These findings extend beyond validation work conducted by the LENA Research Foundation and suggest certain predictive strength of LENA's automated measures for child language. We discussed possible mechanisms underlying the observed associations, as well as the theoretical, methodological, and clinical implications of these findings.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.