LENA stands for Language ENvironment Analysis. It's a revolutionary system designed to capture the amount of talk in your client/child's environment throughout her day.

Processor (DLP) and Language Environment Analysis Software, LENA quantifies and analyzes conversations your client engages in and then tracks the number of words spoken to your client, as well as the number of conversational turns. This turn-taking is as important as the spoken adult words, because turn-taking accelerates each child's language development.

Researchers Dr. Betty Hart, Ph.D., and Dr. Todd Risley, Ph.D., conducted research over almost a decade to learn why some children perform better than others in school. They published their findings in a ground-breaking book called Meaningful Differences. According to the book, the answer comes down to words. Their studies have shown that the more parents and caregivers talked with their children from birth to age four, the more likely those children were to succeed later in life.Further:

• Their study and several subsequent studies confirmed that parents and caregivers who speak 25 million words to their child from birth to four years old were more academically successful. That's 17,000 words every day. After the first four years, it is virtually impossible to close the gap between with children whose parents have provided this advantage and children of parents who have not.

• The quantity of talk a child experiences is directly correlated with the child's IQ and vocabulary size. No other variable, including parents' education or socioeconomic status, predicted a child's IQ or vocabulary more so than the quantity of talk and interactions that parents had with their child.

What is LENA
How Do You Judge a Child's Language Skills?