KU study leads to language measurement device
By Karen Henry
A landmark KU study on how children acquire vocabulary led a Boulder, Colo., company to develop a device that records and analyzes communication between young children and parents, according to a Jan. 6 Chicago Tribune article.
According to the Tribune, the co-founder of Infoture Inc., Terrance Paul, credited the $16 million development of LENA (Language Environment Analysis) to the book "Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of American Children," by Betty Hart, professor emeritus, Bureau of Child Research and the late Todd Risley, former professor in the Department of Applied Behavioral Science and senior scientist at the Life Span Institute.
The 1995 book was based on a 10-year study of 42 children from late infancy to age 3 (and their families) that quantified the dramatic differences in the number of words that children knew by 3. They showed that children who heard more language from early infancy through age 3 had substantially larger vocabularies at age 3 compared to children did not hear as much language in their homes. The differences persisted through the third grade according to a follow up study by Hart and KU researchers Dale Walker, Charles Greenwood and Judith Carta.
The study showed that the amount of language a child hears in its first three years meant having a larger vocabulary at age 3 and predicted later school readiness, spoken language, early literacy and achievement level.
All of the KU researchers are associated with the Juniper Garden's Children's Project located in Kansas City, Kan., one of the 12 centers of the Life Span Institute.
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