Research Database

Comparing automatic and manual measures of parent-infant conversational turns: A word of caution

Topic:

NA

Authors:

Ramírez, Hippe, Kuhl

Journal/Publication:

Child Development

Year:

2021
Participant Age Range:
6 –
24 months

Sample Size:

70

Participant Language:

English

Abstract:

The Language ENvironment Analysis system (LENA) records children’s language environment and provides an automatic estimate of adult–child conversational turn count (CTC). The present study compares LENA’s CTC estimate to manually coded CTC on a sample of 70 English-speaking infants recorded longitudinally at 6, 10, 14, 18, and 24 months of age. At each age, LENA’s CTC was significantly higher than manually coded CTC (all ps < .001, Cohen’s ds: 0.9–2.05), with the largest discrepancies between the two methods observed at younger ages. The Limits of Agreement Analyses confirm wide disagreements between the two methods, highlighting potential problems with automatic measurement of parent–infant verbal interaction. These findings suggest that future studies should validate LENA’s CTC estimates with manual coding.

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