Language enables literacy, education, and employment and is one of the major pathways that support human capability formation. Variation in parental talkativeness has shown to be a plausible mechanism for social inequalities in children’s language acquisition.

A process evaluation was conducted using novel speech recognition technology (LENA) to unobtrusively measure the language environment of the child in the home. Through this study, we aimed to provide the preliminary data and experience to guide future research using LENA software to quantify the audio and social environment of children in South Australia.

Research report: Language Environment Analysis (LENA) Trial: investigating the home language environment in the early years (PDF 877KB)