Comparing Automatic and Manual Measures of Parent–Infant Conversational Turns: A Word of Caution
Open accessAbstract
The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) records children’s language environment and provides an automatic estimate of adult–child conversational turn count (CTC). The present study compares LENA’s CTC estimate to manually coded CTC on a sample of 70 English-speaking infants recorded longitudinally at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months of age. At each age, LENA’s CTC was significantly higher than manually coded CTC (all ps < .001, Cohen’s ds: 0.9–2.05), with the largest discrepancies between the two methods observed at younger ages. The Limits of Agreement Analyses confirm wide disagreements between the two methods, highlighting potential problems with automatic measurement of parent–infant verbal interaction. These findings suggest that future studies should validate LENA’s CTC estimates with manual coding.
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LENA recorders can generate reports about infants' language environments, but their automated analysis has been shown not to correlate with human generated analysis.
“Additionally, while LENA recorders can generate reports about infants’ language environments, their automated analysis has been shown not to correlate with human generated analysis [72]”
From Tracking Acquisition of Language in Kids (TALK) study protocol: A longitudinal investigation of infants at high vs. low risk for atypical speech and language development (2026) · cites this paper as [72]
The Abstract says LENA provides automatic measures of children’s language environments. The Results (page unavailable) find poor absolute agreement between automated and manual conversational-turn counts, but not an absence of correlation: correlations were low at 6 and 10 months and higher at 14–24 months. The claim confuses poor agreement with no correlation and extends a finding about conversational turns to automated analysis generally. (LLM, conf=0.91)
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
Goble, G., Hennessy, V., Cheng, T.-H. Z., Rodda, A., Taulu, S., Gordon, R. L., & Zhao, T. C. (2026) · PLOS One · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0335596
- Authors
- Ramírez, N. F., Hippe, D. S., & Kuhl, P. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Ramírez, Naja Ferjan
- Venue
- Child Development
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2021-03-01
- Volume
- 92
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 672-681
- ISSN
- 0009-3920 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-8624
- PMC
- PMC8048438
- OpenAlex
- W3119928075
- Cited by
- 62
- References
- 40
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 7
- FWCI
- 15.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Child Development (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Overdeck Family Foundation
- The Bezos Family Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Education › Child Development and Digital Technology
- Keywords
- Language Environment Analysis, parent-infant interaction, automated measurement, manual coding, measurement agreement, limits of agreement, early childhood language development
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Child Development, Child Language, Child, Preschool, Communication, Female, Humans, Infant, Language Development, Male, Parent-Child Relations, Parents, Infant Behavior
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