Parent education to improve early language development: A preliminary evaluation of LENA Start
Elmquist, Finestack, Kriese, Lease, McConnell
Journal of Child Language
Parents
play an important role in creating home language environments that promote
language development. A nonequivalent group design was used to evaluate the
effectiveness of a community-based implementation of LENA Start™, a
parent-training program aimed at increasing the quantity of adult words (AWC)
and conversational turns (CT). Parent-child dyads participated in LENA Start™
(n = 39) or a generic parent education program (n = 17). Overall, attendance
and engagement in the LENA StartTM program were high: 72% of participants met
criteria to graduate from the program. Within-subject gains were positive for
LENA Start™ families. Comparison families declined on these measures.
However, both effects were non-significant. Between-group analyses revealed small
to medium-sized effects favoring LENA Start™ and these were significant for
child vocalizations (CV) and CT but not AWC. These results provide
preliminary evidence that programs like LENA StartTM can be embedded in
community-based settings to promote quality parent-child language
interactions.