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Frequently Asked Questions

LENA at a Glance

What does LENA stand for?
LENA stands for Language Environmental Analysis

Yes, LENA is a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit based in Louisville, Colo. LENA was founded in 2004 by the late Terry Paul and his wife, Judi, entrepreneurs who pioneered reading, math, and testing products used in 70,000 schools in the United States and more than 50 countries worldwide. Since then, LENA has become the industry standard for measuring early talk, used by communities all over the world in programs for families and teachers. 

LENA is on a mission is to transform children’s futures through early talk technology and data-driven programs.

We envision a world where every child benefits from positive relationships full of responsive interactions.

 

Visit our careers page to learn more about working at LENA and our benefits, and see open positions. 

As a nonprofit social enterprise, LENA is committed to being good financial stewards while equipping ourselves to innovate and further our mission. We take dual pathways to funding:

  • Generating revenue through the sale of our products and services, like LENA Grow.
  • Securing generous funding from philanthropic organizations that share our vision for improving child outcomes.
LENA has received philanthropic funding from Yield Giving, Valhalla Foundation, Overdeck Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lilly Endowment Inc., W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Daniels Fund, the Esther A. and Joseph Klingenstein Fund, Voqal, Zoma Foundation, and more.
 

About Our Programs

What does LENA do?

Using the LENA System™, LENA takes two paths to improving outcomes for children from birth to five: 

  • LENA Grow® is an evidence-based professional development program for early childhood educators.
  • LENA SP™ is a tool for researchers and clinicians to obtain reliable, detailed language environment data.
 
Researchers, clinicians, and interventionists have proved LENA technology’s accuracy in a wide variety of applications. Its language statistics were validated in a large-scale study that established norms for adult words, conversational turns, and child vocalizations. Every aspect of LENA technology has been extensively tested and calibrated in use through thousands of recordings in multiple languages and widely documented in published research.

LENA’s programs are designed with built-in data that proves efficacy. More details about program effectiveness are available at lena.org/effectiveness.

 
LENA works with a wide variety of partner organizations around the world, including school districts, state agencies, public health initiatives, child care resource and referral agencies (CCR&Rs), libraries, Head Start organizations, and university-community partnerships.
 
LENA technology is the industry standard for measuring talk with children: how many vocalizations they make, how many adult words they hear, and how many conversational turns they experience. LENA uses a small wearable device to deliver detailed feedback about how children experience language.
In short: any language. Studies have been published to validate adult word counts in English, Spanish, European French, the Shanghai dialect of Mandarin Chinese, Italian, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Danish, Brazilian Portuguese, Vietnamese, and Swedish. A peer-reviewed paper published in 2023, “Everyday language input and production in 1,001 children from six continents,” also included data from children exposed to dozens more languages, including Papiamento, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Sahaptin, Slovenian, Solomon-Islands Pidgin, Thai, Turkish, and Yoruba.
Conversational turns are simple back-and-forth alternations between a child and an adult. LENA technology counts a turn when an adult speaks and a child follows, or vice versa, with no more than five seconds in between. Using LENA technology, researchers have linked conversational turns to brain structure, brain function, reading skills, IQ scores, emotional development, language development, executive functioning, and vocabulary skills, making conversational turns one of the strongest predictors of child outcomes.
 

The LENA Technology System

What's the LENA System™?
LENA technology is the industry standard for measuring talk with children: how many vocalizations they make, how many adult words they hear, and how many conversational turns they experience. LENA uses a small wearable device to deliver detailed feedback about how children experience language.
Researchers, clinicians, and interventionists have proved LENA technology’s accuracy in a wide variety of applications. Its language statistics were validated in a large-scale study that established norms for adult words, conversational turns, and child vocalizations. Every aspect of LENA technology has been extensively tested and calibrated in use through thousands of recordings in multiple languages and widely documented in published research.
LENA takes data security and privacy very seriously. We have built and implemented a multitude of technologies and processes to protect your data – and we stand behind them. We are proud to be Type II SOC 2 compliant, which means that every year an outside group audits LENA to confirm that we have appropriate data and privacy protections in place and are using them correctly. In LENA Grow, LENA Start, and LENA Home, audio recordings are automatically deleted immediately after processing into data (number of words and turns, etc.). The device has no playback capability, and the software doesn’t recognize the meanings of words, so no one can ever tell what was said. LENA SP and LENA Pro are the only two versions of LENA that allow the option to retain audio. Each group provides its parents with its own consent form, and parents have the option to participate or not. To learn more, read a message from our CIO about LENA’s data privacy practices or review our official privacy policy.
LENA devices are completely safe. They meet U.S. and international safety standards for electronics and toys. Unlike cell phones, they do not transmit. They use the same kind of low-power processors as hearing aids.
 

LENA Research

What research studies have used LENA technology?
For a complete listing of research studies that have used LENA technology, download the bibliographies of journal publications and LENA user research presentations. To see examples of how researchers have used LENA technology to advance the different areas of study, visit our research page to browse by subject area. Find out about the latest studies on language and brain development and read Q&As with expert researchers on the research section of the LENA blog.
 
Learn more about LENA SP here. It’s LENA’s tool for researchers. It provides a richly detailed picture of a child’s language environment, for researchers, speech-language pathologists, and others who need detailed, scientifically reliable speech-language measurements of children 2 months to 48 months old. 
 

LENA’s programs are designed with built-in data that proves efficacy. More details about program effectiveness are available at lena.org/effectiveness.

 
Conversational turns are simple back-and-forth alternations between a child and an adult. LENA technology counts a turn when an adult speaks and a child follows, or vice versa, with no more than five seconds in between. Using LENA technology, researchers have linked conversational turns to brain structure, brain function, reading skills, IQ scores, emotional development, language development, executive functioning, and vocabulary skills, making conversational turns one of the strongest predictors of child outcomes.
 

Early talk is one of the most important factors shaping children’s brain development during the first few years of life. To understand why early talk matters, it’s helpful to understand what science tells us about child development during the earliest years.

Brains are built from the ground up. Unlike other organs, the human brain is unfinished at birth, and must be built through interactions with adults. Research shows that back-and-forth interactions with adult caregivers are one of the most powerful tools to create a firm foundation of healthy brain architecture for children. During the first years of life, infant and toddler brains are forming more than 1 million neural connections every second, according to the Harvard Center on the Developing Child. That means that these years offer a unique developmental opportunity.

Conversational turns are linked to brain structure, brain function, reading skills, IQ scores, emotional development, and executive function.

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LENA  is a national nonprofit on a mission to  transform children’s futures  through  early talk technology  and  data-driven programs. 

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