Researchers Hart and Risley, conducted nearly 10 years of research to learn why some children perform better than others in school.
They concluded the quantity of talk and interactions that parents had with their child predicted a child’s IQ and vocabulary size more so than any other variable, including parents’ education or socioeconomic status. They also indicated that to ensure your baby’s optimal growth, your baby needs to hear 30 million words in the first four years of life.
We have been using the Lena System (a little digital voice recorder) once a month as part of a study with the Omaha Hearing School and I always find the results fascinating and eye-opening. The study is trying to gauge whether knowing you and your child's language results from the Lena system, impacts your ability to increase conversations with your child.
This month we used the Lena on a day Lily attended preschool.
As we saw last month, conversational turns decline during the preschool period, as do child vocalizations. However, Lily was the "line leader" during this recording so it seemed she had more opportunity to talk. We also see a lot more Distant Speech during the preschool period, instead of Meaningful Speech. The Distant Speech is either that of other children or is hopefully being addressed through the use of an FM system.
Adult words for this day were at 34,627. That is well above our daily goal of 30,000. Total conversational turns were at 1,660 and Child Vocalizations were at 5,129.
At 30,000 words a day (and this is up at the 99th percentile and takes lot of very intentional talking), Lily would hear 42 million words over four years. However, since she didn't hear for for the first 10+ months, we have to subtract 9 million+ words. That means were back to around 33 million words, which is above the 30 million, but not by much.
For me, this certainly strenghtens the arugement for earier implantation and front loading services. Parents don't have enough time to fill these language databases up, before the windows start closing.
Jealous - sounds like you guys have the fancy LENA model. We just have the parent model, though it's still interesting to use.
Posted by: Monica | January 23, 2011 at 11:14 PM
Re: [Life is Bliss - Lilys Cochlear Implant Journey] Monica submitted a comment to Lena System Results - 34,627 words
I dont think we have the really fancy model, but its though Lilys school. Love the LENA.
Posted by: Lily's Mom | January 24, 2011 at 12:11 PM