Purpose: This study was conducted in a large Midwestern metropolitan area to examine the language environments at home and in center-based childcare for young children who are living in poverty. We compared child language use and exposure in the home and childcare settings using extended observations with automated Language Environment Analysis to…

Purpose: Understanding variability sources in early language interaction is critical to identifying children whose development is at risk and designing interventions. Variability across socioeconomic status (SES) groups has been extensively explored. However, SES is a limited individual clinical indicator. For example, it is not generally directly…

This study describes the language environment of preschool programs serving children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and examines relationships between child characteristics and an automated measure of adult and child language in the classroom. The Language Environment Analysis (LENA) system was used with 40 children with ASD to collect data…